Proceedings of International Conference on Applied Innovation in IT
2026/03/31, Volume 14, Issue 1, pp.503-511

Improve Data Transmission Efficiency for Wireless Sensor Networks Through Routing Protocols


Fatima Idrees Ibrahim and Dheyab Salman Ibrahim


Abstract: Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are fundamental components of Internet of Things (IoT) applications, including environmental monitoring, healthcare, industrial automation, and smart cities. However, limited battery capacity, routing overhead, transmission delay, and dynamic topology changes remain major challenges that reduce network lifetime and communication reliability. Therefore, the development of energy-efficient and scalable routing protocols has become a critical research issue in modern WSN environments. This study presents a systematic review and comparative analysis of recent routing protocols for WSNs published between 2020 and 2025. A PRISMA-based review methodology was adopted to identify and evaluate relevant studies from major scientific databases, including IEEE Xplore, ScienceDirect, Springer, MDPI, and Google Scholar. Initially, 120 studies were collected, and after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, 34 high-quality studies were selected for detailed analysis. The reviewed protocols are classified according to network structure, routing strategy, optimization mechanism, and intelligent decision-making approaches. In addition, this review provides comparative benchmarking using key performance metrics, including energy consumption, scalability, routing overhead, latency, throughput, packet delivery ratio, reliability, and network lifetime. Particular attention is given to intelligent routing approaches based on machine learning, deep reinforcement learning, fuzzy systems, and metaheuristic optimization algorithms. The analysis shows that hybrid intelligent routing approaches significantly improve energy efficiency and routing adaptability in dynamic WSN environments. However, challenges related to scalability, computational complexity, real-time adaptability, and lightweight AI integration remain unresolved. Finally, this study highlights current research gaps and proposes future directions for developing intelligent and energy-efficient routing frameworks for next-generation WSN applications.

Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Routing Protocols, Energy Efficiency, Network Scalability.

DOI: Under indexing

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