A STUDY ON ROUTING MECHANISMS FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Abstract

Wireless sensor network (WSN) consist of nodes with sensing, computation and wireless communication capabilities. The difference between the WSN and the traditional wireless networks is that sensors are sensitive to energy consumption. Energy saving is the essential issue in designing the wireless sensor networks, and another major issue in wireless sensor network is the limited battery power within network sensor nodes. In order to increase the lifetime of sensor nodes, it is preferable to distribute the energy throughout the wireless sensor network. So it is important to design effective and energy aware protocols in order to increase the network lifetime. Many routing protocol have been proposed for sensor network where energy awareness is an essential consideration. In this paper we give theoretical analysis of routing protocol for WSN by comparing their strengths and limitations. Three major categories explored in this survey are Data-centric approach, Hierarchical approach and Location-based approach. Routing protocols are described under one of the aforementioned category.