A Systematic Review of Routing Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an emerging technology to monitor physical phenomena and environmental conditions. These networks are composed of large numbers of tiny nodes called sensor nodes. The sensor nodes are capable of sensing environmental conditions such as pressure, temperature, humidity etc., processing the sensed data and transmitting them towards base station through wireless communication. And they are randomly distributed over large field in ad-hoc manner such that they operate in dynamic environment. Because of this, the communication architecture of WSN possesses several challenges such as node deployment, power management, energy constraints, data dissemination etc. To deal with those challenges, various protocols have been introduced and routing algorithm is one of them. Routing algorithms works at network layer and ensures reliable communication for routing the sensor data to base station in limited time period. This paper presents a survey of state-of-the-art on routing algorithms in WSNs. The routing protocols are broadly classified into two categories: routing algorithms based on network structure and routing algorithms based on protocol operation. This survey work has also pointed the advantages and disadvantages of different routing algorithms as well as the performance issues on those routing algorithms.