The Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) is a contemporary metering device installed on system to enable the power system monitoring and control. PMUs are most accurate and advance time synchronized technology which provides measurements of voltages at the buses and also current phase values which are connected to those buses where these PMUs are located. PMU placement on each bus of a system is difficult to achieve either due to cost factor or due to non-existence limitation of communication facilities in some parts of the system. Moreover, as a consequence of Ohm's Law, when a PMU is placed at a bus, neighboring busses also become observable. This implies that a system can be made observable with a lesser number of PMUs than the number of busses. It is necessary to determine the minimum number of PMUs for entire observability of the power network. The optimal placement of PMUs (OPP) problem can be solved by various techniques. Hence in this paper a comprehensive review is presented on the OPP problems under the characterization of heuristic and mathematical methodologies. Also a comparison between