Energy Efficient Flat and Hierarchical Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

摘要

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is an emerging technology for exchanging data in various real-time monitoring systems. The WSN has distributed nature and dynamic topology which introduces very special requirements in routing the data. Various protocols developed for routing in WSNs are broadly classified in to four categories i.e. based on Network Structure, Communication Model, Topology and Reliable Routing. Many energy efficient routing protocols are proposed for WSNs in recent years. Network structure based routing protocols are more commonly used in various applications. To save the energy and for providing the extension of the network life time network structure based protocols are used. The routing protocols based on network structure can be further classified as flat or hierarchical. Finally, a comparison on flat and hierarchical protocols is done, which shows for the energy efficiency hierarchical protocols are more suitable in larger WSNs applications.