Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks consist of a set of sensor nodes, each equipped with one or more sensors, communication subsystems, storage and processing resources, and in some cases actuators. The sensors in a node observe phenomena such as thermal, optic, acoustic, seismic, and acceleration events, while the processing and other components analyze the raw data and formulate answers to specific user requests. Recent advances in technology have paved the way for the design and implementation of new generations of sensor network nodes, packaged in very small and inexpensive form factors with sophisticated computation and wireless communication abilities. Although still at infancy, these new classes of sensor networks, generally referred to as wireless sensor networks (WSN), show great promise and potential with applications ranging in areas that have already been addressed, to domains never before imagined. In this article we provide an overview of this new and exciting field and a brief discussion on the factors pushing the recent flurry of sensor network related research and commercial undertakings. We also provide overview discussions on architectural design characteristics of such networks including physical components, software layers, and higher level services. At each step, we highlight special characteristics of WSNs and discuss why existing approaches and results from wireless communication networks are not necessarily suitable in WSN domains. We conclude by briefly summarizing the state of the art and the future research directions.

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