A Comparative Analysis of Protocols for Integrating IP and Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been used to monitor, control and automate different applications on local scale. Early research therefore, focused on designing MAC, network and transport layer protocols dedicated to meet the specifications of these local WSN applications. However, the idea of integrating sensor networks with the Internet to make the local sensor data accessible on a global scale has gained popularity in recent years. Integrating IP (Internet Protocol) and WSNs pose many challenges due to the different characteristics of these heterogeneous networks. Two integration architectures, proxy-based and network-overlay based have emerged in parallel. This paper surveys the protocols implementing these two integration architectures, their limitations and the extent to which they achieve seamless interoperability of IP and wireless sensor networks. We classify the reviewed protocols at transport and network layers and compare them in terms of relevant performance matrices. Our study shows that there are many limitations in the existing techniques and protocols and the idea of achieving seamless integration is only in its initial stages