A Comparative Analysis of Flat, Hierarchical and Location-Based Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this article, we are going to discuss the comparison of three different categories of routing principles, namely, flat routing, hierarchical routing and location-based routing in Wireless Sensor Networks. Under the flat routing strategies, we are going to discuss 1-D flooding and 2-D flooding. Under the hierarchical category, we will explore spanning tree and under the location-based routing category, we will use angle-based dynamic path construction. For all these four algorithms, on the basis of a precise energy modelling and MAC layer modelling, comparison is made out on the basis of energy consumption and delay incurred for the transmission of data from the sensing nodes via the forwarding nodes and ultimately converging at the sink node. Also, retransmission probability, an important criterion, is taken into consideration and its effect on energy consumption and end-to-end delay is observed.