A review on hierarchical routing methods in sink based wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Routing is an essential part of wireless sensor network and there are several methods proposed to make the scheme more energy efficient and optimal. Nowadays, many researchers are fascinated towards this topic and they have proposed typical hierarchical routing, cluster based routing, grid based routing, etc. This paper tries to make an attempt to provide a review of various hierarchical routing methodologies with their analysis along with comparison. We have enlisted the pros and cons of different hierarchical routing methods. We analyzed their performance and also their useful applications. Still, we found some concerns regarding wireless sensor networks. This might help an engineer to make the design strategy of making the sensor topologies as well as deciding number of nodes in a network. A tree data structure is an example of hierarchical arrangement of nodes. In a similar way we can have a tree structured wireless sensor network with the same terms as parent, child, edge, etc. The collection of edges in a consecutive manner will result in a routing path. This path will be followed by data streams to reach from source node to destination node. The optimal path will reduce the delay in packet transmission and make the network more efficient. The hierarchical routing strategy also aims at reducing energy utilization resulting in increased network lifetime.