Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network: A Critical Survey and Comparison

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of small nodes with sensing, processing and wireless communications capabilities. Routing technique is one of the key concerns in the research area of wireless sensor networks now days. In this paper, important routing protocols and its various challenges such as energy efficiency, security, quality of service, scalability, storage and computation in WSNs are discussed. Wireless Sensor Networks a great opportunity for the researchers in the developing countries. The future developments in sensor nodes must produce very powerful and cost effective devices, so that they may be used in applications like underwater acoustic sensor systems, time critical applications, cognitive sensing and spectrum management and coordination in heterogeneous networks and so on.