A comparative study on energy efficient protocols used in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) play a crucial role in this communication era because they have the ability to real time monitoring and controlling the physical environment from remote locations. Though networked sensors has the advantage to improve the accuracy of information obtained from the network by proper coordination and collaboration between sensors, communicating information between the networked sensors consumes more energy than processing the same. Furthermore, the major concern is, these networks are unattended after deployment and the sensor nodes are battery operated, often limiting available energy. This demands innovative design techniques and communication algorithms to utilize the limited energy source efficiently in order to extend the network lifetime. In this article, a pilot survey is executed to classify the already proposed energy efficient protocols based on their objectives and the design principles, and compare the performance these protocols.