Analysis and comparison of routing protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks under 802.15.4

In this paper we present the analysis and comparison of routing protocols in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) under 802.15.4, in order to determine which one has better stability, performance and energy consumption as the network size increases. Routing protocols are described. Network topologies of 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100 nodes were simulated using Qualnet software; with the results obtained, we analyzed all the data, compared the different metrics at the application, network, Medium Access Control (MAC) and physical layers. It was determined that the Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocol is the one that adapts best to applications with requirements of low transfer rate and limited energy resources.