Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), the routing protocols have been given attention because most of the routing protocols are application and architecture dependent. This chapter presents routing protocols for wireless sensor networks and also classifies routing in WSN. Chapter gives five main classifications of routing protocols in WSN which are data-centric, hierarchical, location-based, network flow and QoS aware and opportunistic routing protocols. The focus has been given on advancement of routing in WSN in form of opportunistic routing, in which the sensor nodes utilize broadcasting nature of wireless links and the data packets can be transmitted through different paths. The routing protocols for WSN are described and discussed under the appropriate classification. A table of comparison of routing protocols on the basis of power usage, data aggregation, scalability, query basis, overhead, data delivery model and QoS parameters has been presented.