Hierarchical Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Network - a Survey

The area of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is one of the most emerging and fast growing fields in the scientific world. It consists a collection of sensing devices and these sensing devices are known as sensor nodes. Each sensor nodes are deployed into the network to monitor the physical or environmental condition such as temperature, sound, vibration at different location. The data is transfer over the network and each sensor node consumes some energy in sending data and receiving data. In WSN, the lifetime of the network depend how much energy spent in each transmission. The efficient use of energy source in a sensor node is most desirable criteria for prolong the life time of wireless sensor network. So designing efficient routing protocol for reducing energy consumption is the important issue in the network. A large number of routing protocol has been proposed since few decades. Some of the most popular routing protocols are LEACH, PEGASIS, TEEN, APTEEN and HEED. This paper reviews each hierarchical routing protocol for wireless sensor networks and describe under the appropriate category. We also highlight the advantage, disadvantage and area of application of each routing technique. Finally, we provide a comparative study on these various hierarchical routing protocols in wireless sensor network.