Agam Gupta et al, International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing, Vol.3 Issue.5, May- 2014, pg. 105-111 © 2014, IJCSMC All Rights Reserved 105 Available Online at www.ijcsmc.com International Journal of Computer Science and Mobile Computing A Monthly Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology ISSN 2320–088X IJCSMC, Vol. 3, Issue. 5, May 2014, pg.105 – 111 RESEARCH ARTICLE Approaches for Combating Delay and Achieving Optimal Path Efficiency in Wireless Sensor Networks Agam Gupta 1 , Mansi Gupta 2 , Anand Nayyar 3 1 Pursuing M.Tech, PTU Main Campus Jalandhar, India 2 Mansi Gupta, Assistant Professor PTU Main Campus, Jalandhar, India 3 Assistant Professor, KCL Institute of Management and Technology, Jalandhar, India 1 agamgupta.90@gmail.com, 2 mansi13gpta@gmail.com, 3 anand_nayyar@yahoo.co.in Abstract: Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained a lot of interest of researchers because of its wide area of applications. Sensor network has four main performance metrics namely network lifetime, end to end delay, packet delivery ratio and throughput. In recent times a lot of research has been done on extending the lifetime of the network. Many times end to end delay factor is compromised for increasing the lifetime of the network. But in some of the applications like environment monitoring, intrusion detection etc. delay is not tolerable. In this paper we have listed some of the approaches or protocols that are both delay resistant and energy efficient. The aim of this paper is to let the readers aware how to increase the network lifetime without compromising the delay factor. This can be very helpful for the applications which do not tolerate delay in their working. Keywords: WSN; end to end delay; energy efficiency; sink mobility; data collection I. INTRODUCTION Wireless sensor networks consists of hundreds of sensors nodes which are capable of sensing the environment and sending the data to the base station. These sensor nodes are usually small in size, battery powered and deployed in harsh environments. Once deployed these nodes remain unattended for long durations. It is very difficult or may be impossible to change the batteries or recharge them. So extending the lifetime of the network is one of the main issues of wireless sensor networks. Other issues include limited hardware resources, random deployment of nodes, unreliable environment, diverse applications etc.