Comparison of Energy Efficient Data Collection Techniques in Wireless Sensor Network

Application of wireless devices is increasing day-by-day in all areas of human life throughout the world. Most of these devices are based on tiny sensors that collect information from surrounding environment automatically without any human intervention when they are deployed in the environment thus creating wireless sensor networks. These tiny sensors are highly energy constrained due to their limited battery, storage, processing power and communication capacity. The constraint makes ‘Energy Efficiency’ one of the most investigated themes among researchers in wireless sensor networks. In the past, various energy efficient data collection techniques have been suggested in the literature. This paper presents a qualitative review of recent advances in data collection techniques in WSN. The review classifies each of the considered techniques based on underlying topology. A second level categorization of these techniques is done based on energy saving scheme used. A comparison of these techniques is provided for qualitatively evaluating these techniques. The review concludes with a discussion on limitations of the considered techniques.