ISSN: 1748-0345 (Online) www.tagajournal.

com

Analysis of Energy Efficient Routing Protocols in

Wireless Sensor Networks

G. Beni (Assistant Professor)

Department of Information Technology,
C.S.I Institute of Technology, Thovalai,
Tamil Nadu, India.
[email protected]

Dr. C. Seldev Christopher (Professor)

Department of Computer Science and Engineering
St. Xaviers Catholic College of Engineering, Chunkankadai,
Tamil Nadu, India.
[email protected]

Abstract— In WSNs, the energy of the nodes is usually limited, which has to be consumed economically in order to prolong
the lifetime of the network. Due to the energy-constrained nature of these wireless sensor networks the traditional routing
protocols cannot be directly applied to WSNs. The objective of this research is channeled towards energy efficient routing and to
achieve better quality of service (QoS) provisions. This paper analyses the various routing protocols and their energy efficiency in
constrained WSN environment.

Keywords—WSNs, Routing, QoS, Energy efficiency

I. INTRODUCTION
A wireless sensor network is a collection of nodes connected together in which each node consists of processing capability,
memory, communication resources, sensors and actuators and power source. The functionalities of wireless sensor network
include sensing activities, exchanging sensed information, aggregating data, reasoning in a local or distributed manner, raising
alarms, activating other sensors, etc. Sensing, processing and communication are three key elements whose combination in one
tiny device gives rise to a vast number of remote sensing applications, including environmental monitoring, precision agriculture,
medical applications and battlefield surveillance.

II. ROUTING ISSUES IN WSNS

Routing in wireless sensor networks differs from traditional routing in fixed networks in many ways. Since there is no
infrastructure, links between nodes are unreliable, sensor nodes may stop working, and routing protocols have to optimize the
energy saving usage. Generally, routing in WSNs can be divided into location-based routing, flat-based routing and hierarchical-
based routing depending on the structure of network. In location-based routing, sensor nodes positions are exploited to route data
in the network. All nodes are typically assigned functionality or roles in flat-based routing. But in hierarchical-based routing
nodes will play different roles in the network. A protocol is said to be adaptive routing protocol if certain system parameters are
controllable in order to adapt to the existing condition of the network and available energy levels. Moreover these routing
protocols can be classified into query-based, negotiation-based, multipath-based, QoS-based, or coherent-based routing depending
on the operation of the protocol.

Besides the above protocols, routing protocols can be further classified into three categories, namely reactive, proactive and
hybrid protocols depending on how the source identifies a route to the destination. In reactive protocols, the routes are computed
based on demand while in proactive protocols, all routes are computed before they are really in need. The combination of these
two ideas is used in Hybrid protocols. It is preferable to employ table driven routing protocols when sensor nodes are static. It is
observed that a significant amount of energy is consumed in route identification and setup of reactive protocols. Another category

© 2018 SWANSEA PRINTING TECHNOLOGY LTD 3029 TAGA JOURNAL VOL. 14

ISSN: 1748-0345 (Online) www.tagajournal.com

of routing protocols is known as the cooperative routing protocols in which nodes send data to a central node where data can be
aggregated and subjected to further processing, hence route cost in terms of energy usage is reduced.

III. ROUTING PROTOCOLS IN ENERGY AWARE WSNS

Conventional routing techniques cannot be applied to wireless sensor networks since there is no fixed infrastructure,
failure of nodes, unreliability of the links. Various routing algorithms were developed for wireless networks and all major routing
protocols proposed for WSNs may be classified into five categories as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Routing Protocols for WSNs

Category Representative Protocols

Location-based Protocols GAF, GEAR, GeRaF

Data-centric Protocols SPIN, Directed Diffusion, Rumor Routing,
COUGAR,
ACQUIRE

Hierarchical Protocols LEACH, PEGASIS, HEED, TEEN,

APTEEN
Mobility-based Protocols SEAD, TTDD, Joint Mobility and Routing
QoS-based protocols SAR, SPEED, Energy-aware routing

A. Hierarchical Routing
In hierarchical routing the network consists of several clusters of sensors and each cluster has a Cluster Head (CH) which is
responsible for controlling all the activities of all sensors in its cluster. The advantages of Hierarchical routing protocols are
extra scalability, less energy consumption, less load, and more robustness. T he hierarchical routing approach groups
the sensor network into clusters and all exchange of information are made between the cluster heads as shown in Fig 1. Data
moves from the lower layers of the protocol to the higher layers enabling to cover larger distances.

Fig 1: Cluster-based Hierarchical Model

B. LEACH
Low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) is one among the energy-efficient hierarchical clustering protocol
introduced for reducing power consumption and prolonging network lifetime by randomly selecting Cluster Heads (CH) among
the various clusters where the routing information is passed only through the cluster heads which reduces the amount of energy
consumed by the nodes. Clusters are formed by localized coordination which restricts the amount of data send to the sink and also
makes the routing robust and scalable. Also LEACH uses fusion technique which aggregates the data and conveys only useful

© 2018 SWANSEA PRINTING TECHNOLOGY LTD 3030 TAGA JOURNAL VOL. 14

ISSN: 1748-0345 (Online) www.tagajournal.com

information to all the nodes. The responsibilities of cluster heads are switched among all the nodes in the cluster in order to evade
energy depletion of individual nodes. LEACH works in two phases namely,

(i) Setup phase: This phase deals with formation of cluster, advertising Cluster heads and creation of transmission schedule.
(ii) State phase: This phase deals with data fusion, data compression and transmission of data to the sink.

This is a distributed protocol that requires no prior knowledge of the network and uses single hop routing technique from
the source node to the cluster head and from the cluster head to the sink node. If the source is farther away from the sink the
cluster heads needs to spend enormous energy and extra overhead is introduced in the network due to dynamic clustering.

C. PEGASIS
PEGASIS is Power-Efficient Gathering in Sensor Information Systems which is an extension of LEACH which forms a
sequence of sensor nodes that gathers data and sends the data from the nodes to the sink as a cluster. In this protocol the Global
knowledge of the network is mandatory and the sensor node chain is constructed in a greedy way. Suppose if a node fails the
chain is reassembled from remaining nodes bypassing the failed node. Each sensor from the chain sends the aggregated data to the
sink during each round. Also it is observed that the lifetime of sensor nodes in PEGASIS is twice that of LEACH.
Since a sensor node should have knowledge about the energy status of its neighbors in order to know where to route its data it
requires dynamic topology adjustment. Such topology adjustment may introduce considerable overhead especially for highly
utilized networks.

D. HEED
Hybrid Energy-Efficient Distributed Clustering is too an extension of LEACH and uses energy consumption in a
distributed manner, terminates clustering in fixed number of iterations, extends the lifetime of network, reduces control overhead,
produces compact clusters and well distributed CHs. Also it takes into account the degree of the node and uses residual energy as
a metric for cluster selection to achieve power balancing. Moreover in inter-clustering communication it uses an adaptive
transmission power. It selects CHs at regular intervals based on the combination of two clustering parameters

(i) the residual energy of each sensor node which is used to probabilistically select an initial set of CHs
(ii) the intra-cluster communication cost as a function of cluster density (i.e. number of neighbors).
The HEED protocol improves network lifetime over LEACH clustering since LEACH randomly selects CHs which makes
some nodes lose their entire energy and become dead. Since the final CHs selected in HEED are uniformly distributed across the
network and the communication cost is reduced. Although, the cluster selection deals with only a subset of parameters, there is a
probability to impose constraints on the system. Hence these methods are most suited for prolonging the network lifetime but not
meeting out the entire needs of WSN.

E. TEEN
TEEN known as Threshold Sensitive Energy Efficient Sensor Network Protocol is a hierarchical clustering protocol,
which also groups sensors into clusters with each group led by a CH. The sensors within a cluster communicate their sensed data
to their CH. After receiving the data from sensors, the CH sends aggregated data to a CH in the higher level until the data reaches
the sink. Therefore, the network architecture in TEEN is based on a hierarchical grouping where closer sensor nodes form clusters
and this process continues until the BS (sink) is reached in the second level. TEEN protocol is useful for applications where the
users can manage a trade-off between energy efficiency, data accuracy, and response time effectively. TEEN utilizes a data-
centric method with hierarchical approach for implementation. The vital features of TEEN protocol include its aptness for time
critical sensing applications. Moreover, since transmission of message consumes more energy than data sensing, the energy
consumption in this format is less than the proactive networks. On the other hand, TEEN is not an appropriate protocol for
sensing applications where periodic reports are required because the user possibly will not get any data if the thresholds are not
reached.
F. APTEEN
Adaptive Periodic Threshold Sensitive Energy Efficient Sensor Network Protocol (APTEEN) aims in periodic data
transmission and responding to time critical events. Also it is a type of hybrid routing protocol with the aim of allowing the sensor
to send their sensed data in regular periods and respond to any sudden change in the value of the sensed information by reporting
the corresponding values to their CHs. It supports three different query types namely

© 2018 SWANSEA PRINTING TECHNOLOGY LTD 3031 TAGA JOURNAL VOL. 14

ISSN: 1748-0345 (Online) www.tagajournal.com

(i) historical query, which analyzes past data values,

(ii) one-time query, which takes a snapshot view of the network and
(iii) persistent queries, which monitors an event over a period of time.

IV. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

Protocol Name Energy Efficiency Cluster Stability Scalability Delivery Delay

LEACH Moderate moderate Very low Very small

PEGASIS Low Low Very low Very large

HEED Moderate High Moderate Moderate

TEEN Very High High Low Small

APTEEN Moderate Very low Low Small

The study on the various hierarchical protocols has shown different values for routing parameters like energy efficiency,
Cluster stability, Scalability and Delivery delay. Above all LEACH has shown moderate energy efficiency and cluster stability
and the delivery delay is also very small. Hence LEACH protocol can be employed in applications that require very small
deliverydelay and energy efficiency is a constraint.

V. CONCLUSION
One of the vital challenges in the design of routing protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks is energy efficiency due to the
limited energy resources of sensors. The ultimate objective behind the design is to extend the network lifetime and thereby
keeping the sensors alive as long as possible. The energy utilization of the sensors is dominated by data reception and
transmission. Therefore, routing protocols that are designed for WSNs should be as energy efficient as possible to extend the
lifetime of individual sensors, and consequently the network lifetime.
In this paper, we have surveyed few hierarchical routing protocols for a Wireless Sensor Network by taking into account the
energy efficiency, cluster stability, scalability and delivery delay. The selection of protocol for a sensor network is a balance
between the energy efficiency and communication topology for a typical network and the application where it is used.

References
[1] S.K. Singh, M.P. Singh, and D.K. Singh, “A survey of Energy-Efficient Hierarchical Cluster-based Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks”, International
Journal of Advanced Networking and Application (IJANA), Sept.–Oct. 2010, vol. 02, issue 02, pp. 570–580.
[2] Ming Liu, Jiannong Cao, Guihai Chen, and Xiaomin Wang, “An Energy-Aware Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks”, Sensors 2009, vol. 9, pp.
445-462.
[3] Luis Javier García Villalba, Ana Lucila Sandoval Orozco, Alicia Triviño Cabrera, and Cláudia Jacy Barenco Abbas, “Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor
Networks”, Sensors 2009, vol. 9, pp. 8399-8421.
[4] K. Akkaya and M. Younis, “An Energy-Aware QoS Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks,”in the Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Mobile
and Wireless Networks (MWN 2003), Providence,Rhode Island, May 2003.
[5] Jamal Al-Karaki, and Ahmed E. Kamal, “Routing Techniques in Wireless Sensor Networks: A
Survey“, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol 11, no. 6, Dec. 2004, pp. 6-28.
[6] W.R. Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “Energy-efficient Communication Protocol for Wireless Microsensor Networks”, in IEEE
Computer Society Proceedings of the Thirty Third Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS '00), Washington, DC, USA, Jan. 2000,
vol. 8, pp. 8020.
[7] W.R. Heinzelman, A. Chandrakasan, and H. Balakrishnan, “An Application-Specific Protocol Architecture for Wireless Microsensor Networks” in IEEE
Tmnsactions on Wireless Communications (October 2002), vol. 1(4), pp. 660-670.
[8] S. Lindsey and C.S. Raghavendra, “PEGASIS: Power-efficient Gathering in Sensor Information System”, Proceedings IEEE Aerospace Conference, vol. 3,
Big Sky, MT, Mar. 2002, pp. 1125-1130.
[9] Ossama Younis and Sonia Fahmy, “Distributed Clustering in Ad-hoc Sensor Networks: A Hybrid, Energy-efficient Approach”, September 2002.

© 2018 SWANSEA PRINTING TECHNOLOGY LTD 3032 TAGA JOURNAL VOL. 14

ISSN: 1748-0345 (Online) www.tagajournal.com

[10] Ossama Younis and Sonia Fahmy” Heed: A hybrid, Energy-efficient, Distributed Clustering Approach for Ad-hoc Networks”, IEEE Transactions on
Mobile Computing, vol. 3, no. 4, Oct.-Dec. 2004, pp. 366-369.
[11] A. Manjeshwar and D. P. Agrawal, “TEEN: A Protocol for Enhanced Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks”, in the Proceedings of the 1st International
Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Issues in Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, San Francisco, CA, April 2001.
[12] W. Lou, “An Efficient N-to-1 Multipath Routing Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks”, Proceedings of IEEE MASS’05, Washington DC, Nov. 2005, pp.
1-8.
[13] A. Manjeshwar and D. P. Agrawal, "APTEEN: A Hybrid Protocol for Efficient Routing and Comprehensive Information Retrieval in Wireless Sensor
Networks", in the Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Computing Issues in Wireless Networks and Mobile
computing, San Francisco CA, April 2001, pp. 2009-1015

© 2018 SWANSEA PRINTING TECHNOLOGY LTD 3033 TAGA JOURNAL VOL. 14