Various Routing Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks for Energy Minimization

Abstract

The past few years have witnessed increased interest in the potential use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in a wide range of applications and it has become a hot research area. Lot of researchers are showing interest in WSN for disaster management where prediction of upcoming disaster is required well in advance before it happens and in critical areas where human presence is not possible directly; wired communication dose not suit well for such applications. So, Wireless Sensor Network with proper routing methods which will give quick, correct and redundant information is required. Based on network structure, routing protocols in WSNs can be divided into two categories: straight routing and hierarchical or clustering routing. Owing to a large number of advantages, clustering is becoming an active branch of routing technology in WSNs. In this study, we present an all-inclusive and fine grained survey on clustering routing protocols proposed in the literature for WSNs. We outline the advantages and objectives of clustering for WSNs, and develop a novel table of WSN clustering routing methods. In particular, we have systematically studied few prominent WSN clustering routing protocols and compared these different approaches according to our table and several significant metrics. Finally, we summarize and conclude the paper with some future work directions. Wireless sensor network in today's world seems an unavoidable part of human life. Because of its applications ranging from disaster management, in critical areas where human presence is not possible, to various industrial applications such as temperature monitoring, pressure monitoring, humidity monitoring and many more applications in each and every field. WSN plays very important role in each part of the human life. Basically in WSN, sensor nodes are used which monitor the environmental condition and accordingly take necessary action if the event is detected. But small size of sensor nodes is its challenge. Large energy gets consumed in sensing and receiving data which causes early death of sensor nodes. This early death of some sensor nodes creates energy hole problem in the network and network cannot work properly. To prevent this, a proper routing protocol needs to be developed which increases overall lifetime of the network. There are many protocols developed which use different techniques for data routing through the network.