ABSTRACT
Routing is one of the most fundamental operations in any network that attempts to ensure the delivery of messages from a source to a selected destination. It is a two-step method that involves the process of discovering a suitable route between the concerned source and its destination, and the forwarding of messages using this discovered route. In traditional networks (IP or 3G networks), routing operations are dedicated to special nodes, such as routers. However, WSN consist of resource-constraint devices operating in an ad-hoc decentralized manner that require all the network operations to be done by these ordinary sensor nodes. Some real-time applications (remote-sensing operations) require the routing protocols to facilitate the timely delivery of messages. However, such applications are too resource intensive in WSN and require routing protocols that
can balance the energy consumption of the entire network. Furthermore, the number of nodes operating in a WSN scenario is much larger than conventional networks. Consequently, there is a need for the mass production of low-cost nodes. However, with the increase in the number of sensor nodes to meet the current demand for sensor applications, construction of each node to be tamper resistant would be very expensive. As a result, nodes could be susceptible to a node-capture attack. Hence, routing protocols used in traditional networks cannot be applied directly to a resource-constraint environment such as WSN. Therefore, new arrays of routing protocols have been designed for WSN (Al-Karaki and Kamal 2004).
