Adaptive routing for wireless sensor networks: a survey

With the advancement of wireless communication, software engineering and Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology, the sensor nodes are much more capable now and have found their application in many areas of life. In view of this, the design of efficient routing protocols is very critical. The routing protocols need to be adaptive to cater the wide variety of applications of wireless sensor networks. In general, adaptive routing is essential for wireless sensor networks to be fault tolerant, secure, and have increased life-time and real-time capabilities. This survey provides an in-depth view of past and on-going research on adaptive routing protocols in wireless sensor networks from 1999 to 2007. In this survey, we present our investigation of various routing objectives for adaptation and approaches used by various routing algorithms to achieve adaptation. Routing objective of routing protocols often change due to changes application requirement and network dynamics during the life-time of the wireless sensor network. In this survey, adaptive routing algorithms are classified broadly into two categories. The adaptive routing protocols in the first category emphasize energy aware routing objectives while the ones in the second category emphasize on non energy routing objectives. It is found that there is much less referral of work of one research group by the other research group in adaptive routing research in wireless sensor networks.