Literature Review of MAC, Routing and Cross Layer Design Protocols for WSN

Abstract

A WSN is composed of a large number of sensor nodes that are communicating using a wireless medium. The sensor nodes are deployed in the environment to be monitored in ad hoc structure. In WSN, there is sink node that collects data from all sensors, and usually not all nodes hear all other nodes. WSN is considered a multi-hop network. Although a WSN is a wireless multi-hop network, the ease of deployment of sensor nodes, the system lifetime, the data latency, and the quality of the network distinguish WSN from traditional multi-hop wireless networks. These features must be taken into account when designing different protocols that control the operation of WSN such as MAC protocols and routing protocols. Therefore, Many MAC and Routing protocols are proposed for WSN. These protocols take into account the distinguished features of WSN. Moreover, Cross layer design protocols are proposed for WSN. In cross layer design protocols, different layers interact to optimize the performance of the WSN protocol. In this chapter, we will present a survey of the most well known protocols for WSN. A survey of the most well-known MAC protocols is presented in section 0. Section 0 presents discussion of routing protocols of WSN and classification of these protocols according to data traffic models. The routing protocols are also classified as: data centric protocols, hierarchical protocols, location-based protocols and QoS-aware protocols. In section 0, we will present some cross layer design protocols for WSN. A summery of the cross layer design protocols is presented at the end of the section.