Table 1.

Summary of related works.

Year	Survey Paper	Contributions
2002	[30,31]	✓Discussed the potential applications and factors affecting the design of WSNs. ✓Outlined the communication architecture for WSNs.
2004	[11]	✓Analysed the difficulties in designing a routing protocol for WSNs. ✓Classified routing strategies into flat, hierarchical, and location-based routing. ✓Defined some metrics such as negotiation-based, QoS-based, multipath-based to classify routing protocols. ✓Compared the different routing protocols for WSNs, stating their strengths and weaknesses.
2005	[32]	✓Provided a general survey on routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Classified routing protocols into data-centric, hierarchical, and location-based.
2006	[12]	✓Discussed the challenges and logic in developing a clustering algorithm for WSNs. ✓Discussed the problems that face the practical design of clustering routing techniques for WSN applications. ✓Classified clustering routing algorithms for WSNs based on the clustering objectives and design principles.
2007	[13]	✓Introduced a taxonomy to classify clustering routing protocol. ✓Discussed the strengths and weaknesses of different clustering routing algorithms. ✓Compared different clustering techniques using some measures such as cluster stability, location-awareness, convergence rate.
2008	[33]	✓Provided an overview of different WSN applications. ✓Classified the challenges in WSNs into three categories. ✓Presented the main research development in the mentioned categories.
2009	[34]	✓Provided a survey on energy consumed by SN hardware components. ✓Divided SN’s hardware into four main components. ✓Classified the energy saving schemes for WSNs into duty-cycling, data-driven, and mobility-based. ✓Elaborated on the importance of conserving energy consumed by SN hardware components.
2010	[38]	✓Discussed and compared different energy-efficient hierarchical cluster-based routing protocols for WSNs.
2011	[35]	✓Provided a survey on energy-efficient routing protocols for WMSNs. ✓Defined the design challenges and limitations of energy-efficient routing protocols for WMSNs. ✓Classified the energy-efficient routing protocols for WMSNs based on some metrics such as QoS requirement, data delivery model.
2011	[36]	✓Provided a survey on swarm intelligence-based routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Discussed the general principles and applications of swarm intelligence-based routing for WSNs. ✓Proposed a taxonomy to classify swarm intelligence-based routing protocols for WSNs.
2011	[14]	✓Provided a survey on energy-efficient clustering routing protocols for heterogeneous WSNs. ✓Compared fifteen routing protocols based on the clustering method, clustering attributes, location-awareness, and heterogeneity level.
2012	[39]	✓Classified clustering routing protocols based on their objectives and methods. ✓Provided a taxonomy to the studied clustering routing protocols. ✓Discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the techniques used in the studied clustering routing protocols. ✓Summarises the issues and solutions of the attributes and characteristics of clustering approaches.
2012	[15]	✓Presented the advantages and applications of clustering techniques for WSNs. ✓Introduced a taxonomy to classify clustering routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Compared different clustering routing protocols based on measures such as scalability, energy efficiency, cluster stability, load balancing.
2012	[37]	✓Classified energy-efficient routing protocols into three categories, stating their strengths and weaknesses. ✓Explained the areas of application of different energy-efficient routing protocols.
2012	[16]	✓Discussed the notion and challenges of multipath routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Classified the surveyed multipath routing protocols while outlining their pros and cons. ✓Summarised the surveyed multipath routing protocols based on their network applications.
2012	[17]	✓Classified multipath routing protocols for WSNs into infrastructure-based, non-infrastructure-based, and coding-based. ✓Explained the evaluation metric, objectives, and challenges in designing a multipath routing protocols for WSNs.
2013	[18]	✓Investigated the advantages of different multipath routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Classified different multipath routing protocols for WSNs based on their features.
2013	[4]	✓Provided a survey on energy-efficient routing protocols for WSNs. ✓Classified energy-efficient routing protocols for WSNs based on the topology, communication model, network structure, and reliable routing schemes ✓Compared different energy-efficient routing protocols for WSNs, stating their advantages and disadvantages.
2014	[10]	✓Provided a general overview of WSNs, stating the areas of application and challenges of WSNs. ✓Reviewed the prime research work and testbeds, standards and platforms, and the techniques and principles of WSNs. ✓Outlined the current happenings in WSN research that considers the possible interaction between WSNs and other technologies.
2016	[19]	✓Compared different multipath routing protocols for WMSNs based on their working operations. ✓Provided the advantages and disadvantages of different multipath routing protocols for WMSNs.