Evolution of Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks Considering Challenges Advances and Drone-Assisted Innovations

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks have been utilized in a variety of fields, including environmental monitoring, agriculture, and disaster management. In view of the limited energy resources of WSNs, energy-efficient routing can significantly help in enhancing the WSN performance regarding energy conservation, reliability, and scalability. This survey explains appealing features of WSNs, addressing routing protocols along their usage constraints and performance expectations, considering first the traditional ones, and then the drone-based methods that are seen as a novel solution for many of the weaknesses of current practices, especially in wide and remote areas. Drones, or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), overcome challenges such as gaps in coverage, energy restrictions, and network growth by offering mobility and adjustability. Drones function as effective mobile data gathering and transmission devices, improving the network performance in a dynamic and massive environment. This survey investigates recent advances in WSN routing protocols, presents emergent problems including energy preservation, delay, and safety issues, and explains how the integration of drones solved most of these problems. Finally, the study presents future trends and the residual challenges for drone-based routing, from different routing features, connectivity, energy efficiency, control of the topology, and security.