Summary Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks (MWSNs) have emerged as a new evolution trend in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) technology as a result of the growth and popularization of mobile terminal technology. WSNs' feature spectrum is greatly expanded by the mobility of nodes introduced by MWSNs. MWSN is a network with lots of sensors that are initially distributed randomly and collaborate to gather, process, and transmit information around targets to the sink node. MWSN is an overgrowth and emerging technology with significant applications that provide free moving for sensors and adaptable communicating with each other without fixed infrastructure. Because of their small size, they have limited radio capability, storage, and power. Therefore, MWSNs are utilized to improve network lifetime, energy expenditure, and channel capacity than fixed WSNs. Many routing protocols have recently been introduced to perform advances in the field of energy expenditure for MWSN data collection. This paper introduces a survey on hierarchical‐based routing protocols for MWSNs. The survey outlines the classification of the routing techniques in the aspect of mobility. The comparisons between Mobile Sensor Node (MSN) protocols, Mobile Sink (MS) protocols, and protocols for mobile of both sink and sensor node together are introduced individually. Moreover, the commercial software programs for MWSNs are discussed. Finally, the challenges and future trends in MWSNs are presented.