Energy consumption in wireless sensor network : simulation and compartative study of flat and hierarchical routing protocols

Sensor networks are dense wireless networks of small, low-cost sensors, which collect and disseminate environmental data, it used in a variety of fields like military surveillance, habitat monitoring, monitoring and gathering events in hazardous environments, surveillance of buildings, whether monitoring etc. In wireless sensor networks Flat and Hierarchical routing are two most typical routing protocols. Comparing the two routing protocols (flat / hierarchical) is very important to know well the performance of each routing, for that, in this paper we will discuss in first some of the major Flat routing protocols (AODV, DSDV, GSR, FSR, OLSR, SPIN) and hierarchical routing protocols (LEACH-C, LEACH-F, PEGASIS, ZHLS) for wireless sensor networks, and later we will compare and simulate the behavior on lifetime and energy using NS2 simulator for flat and hierarchical routing protocols.