Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications have become more and more attractive with the miniaturization of circuits and the large variety of sensors. The different application domains, especially critical fields of WSN use, make the reliability of data acquisition and communication a hot research field that must be tackled efficiently. Indeed, the quality of largely used, cheap-cost wireless sensors and their scarce energy supply support these reliability challenges that lead to data loss or corruption. For solving this problem, the conception of a reliability mechanism that detects these shortcomings and recovers to them becomes necessary. In this article, we present a survey on existing reliability protocols conceived especially for WSNs due to their special features. The deep classification and discussion in this study allow for understanding the pros and cons of state-of-the-art works in order to enhance the existing schemes and fill the gaps. We have classified the works according to the required level of reliability, the manner to identify the origins of the lack of reliability, and the control to recover this lack of reliability. Across the discussion along this study, we deduce that the cross-layer design between MAC, routing, and transport layers presents a good concept to efficiently overcome the different reliability holes.