Performance Analysis of Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are interconnected sensor devices that can detect process and communicate data over large distances in large geographical areas. Today sensor devices have found their use in defense services, notably military services, disaster management, medical services, wildlife monitoring and precision agriculture, and in habitat monitoring and logistics. Since the sensor devices are small, they have limited energy resources that reduce their service life. Because of this restriction, energy management is the primary research area in these networks. This study determines the performance of five routing protocols: Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Temporally Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA), Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), Geographical Routing Protocol (GRP), Distance Routing Effect Algorithm for Mobility (DREAM) and their comparison. The results are shown in three scenarios whereby DREAM is considered as one of the best routing protocols based on four performance metrics.