DefinePK

Abstract

The Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has a limited power supply because each node was equipped with a battery. In most situations, they are deployed in a hostile environment where it is exceptionally hard to change or charge their batteries. Because of this, it becomes challenging in WSN to prolong the system lifetime and at the same time achieve a better throughput. The number of nodes in the network is regarded as the most significant factor in the WSN performance. Therefore, the current paper aimed to study the effect of the number of nodes on the performance of WSN. Quality of service (QoS) performance metrics in the study were network lifetime, energy dissipation and throughput in a different number of nodes. In addition, during the study, we proposed and implemented the graphical user interface (GUI) tools to generate the Network Simulator 2 (NS-2) script code for topology scenario file, and the graph tools (GT) to plot the NS-2 simulation results. The visual basic language was used to design the GUI for generating the NS-2 script code while MATLAB was used to design the GT. Simulation experiments were conducted using NS-2.34 with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) extension LEACH protocol for a different number of nodes. We conclude that the increasing number of nodes can cause decreasing the throughout and consuming high energy, hence, resulting in the reduction of network lifetime.