Simulation & Performance Evaluation of Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is consisting of independent sensors, communicating with each other to monitor the environment. Sensor nodes are usually attached to microcontroller and are powered by battery. The resource constrained nature of WSN implies various challenges in its design and operations, which degrades its performance. However, the major fact that sensor nodes run out of energy quickly, has been an issue. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs, where energy consumption is an essential design issue, which preserves longevity of the network. Out of these, clustering algorithms have gained more importance, in increasing the life time of the WSN, because of their approach in cluster head selection and data aggregation.This paper elaborately compares essential routing protocols using NS2 tool for several chosen scenarios. The paper is concluded by mentioning valuable observations made from analysis of results about several imperative protocols.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network, Proactive Routing, Reactive Routing, Cluster Head, Energy Consumption, NS2.