117 Leach and Its Progenies - An Extended Survey 1 J. Gnanambigai, 2 Dr.N. Rengarajan, 3 R. Jenifer Prarthana 1 Associate Professor, 2 Principal, 3 P.G. Student K.S.R College of Engineering, Tiruchengode, Tamil Nadu, India ABSTRACT The recent developments in the technological advancements paved the way for the origin of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The WSNs highly rely upon the battery power for their energy. Each operation that takes place in the network consumes certain energy and apparently the battery power is reduced. Required countermeasures must be adapted to save the energy being depleted. There are several available techniques to circumvent the energy depletion. One significant technique for ensuring energy efficient operation is proper choice of routing protocols. Especially the role played by LEACH that comes under the family of the hierarchical routing protocols in energy saving is tremendous. But on the flip side it too has certain confinements. The ongoing researches in LEACH are an effort to extend the wings of LEACH to fit to various circumstances. This work tries to explore the functionalities of LEACH and its followers and infer the effects and in addition presents its comparison. Keywords: Energy efficiency, LEACH, LEACH-C, Network Lifetime, PEACH, WSN 1. INTRODUCTION Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is widely considered to be one of the fascinating and rapidly maturing fields. The WSN consists of small sized, low power, low cost sensor nodes that are capable of sensing, information processing and communication with aid of the in-built components. The in- built is composed of sensor, controller, battery, transceiver and memory. An important character sketch of WSN is their self-organizing nature i.e, once deployed they must organize themselves and perform the assigned task. After deployment the battery associated with the sensor node cannot be recharged through any means. This instincts that the network lifetime directly stands upon the battery power. All the measures must be taken to make sure that there must not be any inappropriate energy depletion. The Routing protocols in the WSNs are classified as Flat, Hierarchical and Location-aware routing. Out of these schemes the hierarchical routing proves to energy conserving one. Hierarchical routing protocols are the classes that follow a certain hierarchy order for communication. The prototype communication is the utility of the hierarchy that includes Base station, Cluster heads- nodes with special capacities and ordinary nodes. This enhances the lifetime of network and scalability. International Journal of Research in Computer Applications & Information Technology Volume 1, Issue 2, October-December, 2013, pp. 117-123, © IASTER 2013 www.iaster.com, ISSN Online: 2347-5099, Print: 2348-0009