A review on distributed cluster based routing approaches in mobile wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are class of networks composed of sensor nodes having sensing, communication, and computing capabilities which can monitor various environmental conditions like temperature, pressure, speed, gas, proximity, light, etc. Many applications such as smart transport systems, habitat monitoring, under water monitoring require WSNs to be mobile rather than static. Hence, Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSN) have become more prospective in human life applications. There exist various methods to organize large number of sensing devices to monitor, gather, aggregate data, and to find the best path to forward the data (routing) to the central node called Base Station. Cluster based routing is one of the efficient methods for data collection and aggregation. Non-centralized approaches for path selection and data forwarding eliminates single point failure and ensures accurate routing decisions. So, distributed cluster based routing prolongs network lifetime, improves Packet Delivery Ratio, and supports scalability in MWSN. A review on MWSN, its applications, issues in mobility management, existing cluster based distributed routing protocols, their features, parameters used for simulation, and limitations are presented in this paper.