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Analysis and Report of Wireless sensor networks

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IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 8, Issue 4, No 1, July 2011
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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Analysis and a Report of Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications

1. M.Chithik Raja 2. V.S.Balasubramanian

1. Department of Computing and Information System , EiT-M Mekelle University, Mekelle , Ethiopia

2. Department of Computing and Information System , EiT-M Mekelle University, Mekelle, Ethiopia

Abstract energy from vibrations, blasts of radio energy, and the

like, self-powered circuitry is a very real possibility, with
In this research work, a survey on Wireless Sensor
networks of millions of nodes, deployed through
Networks (WSN) and their technologies, standards and
applications was carried out. Wireless sensor networks paintbrushes, injections, and aircraft. Also, the
consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and introduction of an additional type of sensor nodes
wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, allowing the network to self-organize and “learn”, by
power management, and data dissemination protocols embedding smart and adaptive algorithms. On the other
have b een s pecifically designed f or W SNs w here hand, The use of adaptive power control in IP
energy awareness is an essential design issue. Routing networks that utilize reactive routing protocols and sleep-
protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the mode operation, more powerful mobile agents, QoS
application and network architecture. A multidisciplinary (Quality of Service) to guarantee delivery, security
research area such as wireless sensor networks, where mechanisms, robustness and fault-tolerance. Wireless
close collaboration between users, application domain sensors have become an excellent tool for military
experts, hardware designers, and software developers is applications involving intrusion detection, perimeter
needed to implement efficient systems. The monitoring, information gathering and smart logistics
flexibility, fault tolerance, high sensing fidelity, low support in an unknown deployed area. Some other
cost, and rapid deployment characteristics of sensor applications: sensor-based personal health monitor,
networks create many new and exciting application location detection with sensor networks and movement
areas for remote sensing. In the future, this wide range detection.
of application areas will make sensor networks an
integral part of our lives. However, realization of sensor
networks needs to satisfy the constraints introduced by
2. Standards
factors such as f ault t olerance, s calability, c ost,
From [ 2], while most ongoing work in IEEE 802
hardware, topology change, environment, and power
wireless working groups is geared to increase data rates,
consumption.
throughput, and QoS, the 802.15.4 LR-WPAN (Low rate-
Wireless Personal Area Network) task group is aiming for
Keywords: Application, Middleware, wireless sensor other goals. The focus of 802.15.4 is on very low power
Network survey and Protocol
consumption, very low cost, and low data rate to connect
devices that previously have not been networked, and to
1. Introduction allow applications that cannot use current wireless
specifications. Working within a standards organization to
WIRELESS ad-hoc sensor networks have recently develop a wireless solution has the advantage of bringing
emerged as a premier research topic. They have great long developers and users of such a technology together in
term economic potential, ability to transform our lives, order to define a better solution. The work also fosters
and pose many new system-building challenges. Sensor high-level connectivity to other types of networks and
networks also pose a number of new conceptual and enables low-volume products that do not justify a
optimization problems. Some, such as location, proprietary solution to be wirelessly connected. Two
deployment, and tracking, are fundamental issues, in that physical layer specifications were chosen to cover the 2.4
many applications rely on them for needed information. GHz worldwide band and the combination of the868
Coverage in general, answers the questions about MHz band in Europe, the 902 MHz band in Australia, and
quality of service (surveillance) that can be provided the 915 MHz band in the United States. Both physical
by a particular s ensor network. The integration of layers are direct sequence spread spectrum
multiple types of sensors such as seismic, acoustic, (DSSS) solutions. For further information, the selected
optical, etc. in one network platform and the study proposals can be downloaded from the 802.15 Web site.
of the overall coverage of the system also presents The efforts of the IEEE 802.15.4 task group will bring us
several interesting challenges. With the refinement one step closer to the goal of a wirelessly connected
of energy ha rvesting techniques that can gather useful world.
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number of packets may suffer from large variance, and the

From [1], one of the IEEE 802.15.4 physical layers described protocols may need some adjustments. More
operates in the 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific and medical realistic interference models can be added, and transport
band with nearly worldwide availability; this band is also layer protocols also need to be adjusted [5].From [6], a
used by other IEEE 802 wireless standards. Coexistence survey of state-of-the-art routing techniques in WSNs is
among diverse collocated devices in the 2.4 GHz band presented. First, it is outlined the design challenges for
is an important issue in order to ensure that each wireless routing protocols in WSNs followed by a comprehensive
service maintains its desired performance requirements. survey of routing techniques. Overall, the routing
On the other hand, from [4], the IEEE 1451, a family of techniques were classified into three categories based on
Smart Transducer Interface Standards, describes a set of the underlying network structure: flit, hierarchical, and
open, common, network-independent communication location-based routing. Furthermore, these protocols could
interfaces for connecting transducers (sensors or actuators) be classified into multipath-based, query-based,
to microprocessors, instrumentation systems, and negotiation-based, QoS- based, and coherent-based
control/field networks. depending on the protocol operation. Design trade-offs
between energy and communication overhead savings
The key feature of these standards is the definition of a in every r outing paradigm were studied. Advantages
TEDS (Transducer Electronic Data Sheet).The TEDS is a and performance issues of each routing technique were
memory device attached to the transducer, which store highlighted [6]. From [7], when compared with now
transducer identification, calibration, correction data, and classical MANETs (Mobile Ad hoc Networks) [28],
manufacture-related information. The goal of 1451 is to sensor networks have different characteristics, and
allow the access of transducer data through a common present different design and engineering challenges. One
set of interfaces whether the transducers are connected to of the main aspects of sensor networks is that the solutions
systems or networks via a wired or wireless means. The tend to be very application- specific. For this reason, a
family of IEEE 1451 standards are sponsored by the IEEE layered view like the one used in OSI imposes a large
Instrumentation and Measurement Society’s Sensor penalty, and implementations more geared toward the
Technology Technical Committee. IEEE P1451.5 defines particular are desirable.
a transducer-to-NCAP (Network Capable Application
Processor) interface and TEDS for wireless transducers. Communication, which is the most energy-costly aspect of
Wireless standards such as 802.11 (WiFi), 802.15.1 the network, can be organized in three fundamentally
(Bluetooth), 802.15.4 (ZigBee) are being considered as different ways: node-centric, data-centric, and position-
some of the physical interfaces [4]. centric. Node-centric communication is the most popular
and well understood paradigm, being currently used in the
3. Protocol Internet. The other two, data-centric and position-centric,
are more scalable, better adaptable to applications, and
There are several protocols proposed for WSNs (Wireless conceptually more appropriate in many cases, and
Sensor Network). From [5], the MAC (Medium Access therefore may successfully challenge the node-centric way
Control) layer reacts to this probabilistic reception of looking at the sensor networks.
information by adjusting the number of acknowledgments
and/or retransmissions. It is observed that an optimal route Data-centric approaches, on the other hand, tend to
discovery protocol cannot be based on a single provide a top-to-bottom solution, as is the case with
retransmission by each node, because such a search may directed diffusion. In fact, directed diffusion solves only
fail to reach the destination or find the optimal path. Next, one problem, but solves it right. A new IEEE
It is discussed that gaining neighbor knowledge standard, 802.15.4, is aimed at low-power low-distance
information with “hello” packets is not a trivial protocol. It communication devices that may allow years of
is described the localized position-based routing protocols battery life. The standard allows for both hierarchical
that aim to minimize the expected hop count (in case of and flat peer-to-peer topologies, and provisions for
hop-by-hop acknowledgments and fixed bit rate) or one hop reliability and real-time guarantees. At the lower
maximize the probability of delivery (when layers, there may be a choice between RF and optical
acknowledgments are not sent). communication, but it is still unclear what the logical and
address organization of future sensor networks will be. It
can be flat with identical nodes, or hierarchical with
An interesting open problem for future research is to
cluster heads that are more powerful in terms of storage,
consider physical-layer-based routing and broadcasting
computation, and communication. Solutions here are
where nodes may adjust their transmission radii. Expected
either awkward (triangle routing in mobile Internet) or
power consumption may then be considered a primary
wasteful (rediscovery of paths in ad hoc node-centric
optimality measure. Further research should address other
networks).Here position-centric approaches
problems in the design of network layer protocols. For
have t he advantage be cause t hey do not require
instance, if we consider a more dynamic and realistic
particular nodes to be involved in forwarding, but use
channel model, such as multi-path fading, the estimated
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whichever ones provide connectivity. Some of the projects probabilistic due to the uncertainty associated with sensor
exploring the possibility of installing arbitrary code on detections. It was formulated an optimization problem on
sensors are Sensor Ware and Maté. The use of Tcl (Tool sensor placement, wherein a minimum number of sensors
Command Language) scripts and b yte code al lows are deployed to provide sufficient coverage of the sensor
installation of c omplex distributed algorithms that can field. This approach offers a unique “minimalistic” view
access all the communication and sensing capabilities of of distributed sensor networks in which a minimum
each node. Finally, if sensor networks are to be deployed number of sensors are deployed and sensors
in large sizes, scalability with respect to the number of transmit/report a minimum amount of sensed data [9].
nodes becomes a deciding factor in choosing a
communication paradigm. It is likely that position-centric, From [10], the basic topology desired in data-gathering
data-centric, or maybe a c ombination of them is the best wireless sensor networks is a spanning tree, since the
bet for future sensor networks [7]. traffic is mainly in the form of many-to-one flows.
Nodes in the network can self configure themselves into
From [30], IS-MAC protocol based flooding protocol such a topology by a two-phase process: a flood initiated
(ISF) for wireless sensor networks was introduced. by the root node, followed by parent selection by all
Existing flooding protocols are based on IEEE nodes. Four localized topology generation mechanisms are
802.11 MAC layer that gives ideal listing problem for the presented – earliest-first, randomized, nearest-first, and
sensor networks. Ideal listening is the most prominent weighted- randomized parent s election. N etwork
cause for energy waste in sensor networks. It was performance o f these mechanisms on the basis of the
proposed ISF routing protocol that gives energy efficient following metrics: node degree, robustness, channel
data delivery mechanism for wireless sensor networks. quality, data aggregation and latency are compared; this
Special features of IS-MAC protocol makes the ISF study shows how localized self configuration mechanisms
protocol most promising candidate for the routing can impact the global network behavior: earliest-first and
protocols for wireless sensor networks. ISF protocol uses nearest-first schemes produce a data-gathering tree with
hop count/location information to achieve energy low network reliability, high data aggregation ability, and
efficiency for the data delivery mechanism. Performance long response time to an event. Randomized and
evaluation showed the superiority of ISF protocol over the weighted-randomized schemes, on t he other hand,
direct and directional flooding protocols. construct a balanced data-gathering tree with high network
reliability, low data aggregation ability, and short response
4. Coverage time to an event. In addition, nearest-first scheme
outperforms other three s chemes i n c hannel quality
[10].From [24], some sensor nodes may be equipped with
From [8], for the context of coverage, negotiation and
special hardware such as a Global Positioning
resolution strategies are needed to integrate information
System(GPS) receiver to act as beacons for other nodes to
from this stage to be used in related contexts such as
infer their location; some nodes may act as gateways to
tracking mobile objects in the network and handling
long- range data communication networks (e.g., GSM
obstacles. Although the algorithm was developed for a
(Global System for Mobile) networks, satellite networks,
wireless ad hoc sensor network, a centralized control
or the Internet).
server, where nodes are connected using a gateway was
assumed. Other control strategies such as distributed
control systems are also feasible. It is possible to compare 5. Energy
the centralized coverage algorithm to distributed ones in
terms of power consumption, cost, and performance. From [11], a micro sensor network that can gather and
transmit data for years demands nodes that operate at
In practice, other factors influence coverage such as energy efficiencies unheard of in today’s wireless systems.
obstacles, environmental conditions, and noise. In addition Sensor nodes must take advantage of operational diversity,
to non homogeneous sensors, other possible sensor models such as the long periods of idle time between interesting
can deal with non-isotropic sensor sensitivities, where events, by gracefully scaling back energy consumption.
sensors have different sensitivities in different directions. The user must precisely define the network’s performance
The integration of multiple types of sensors such as requirements using metrics ranging from latency to
seismic, acoustic, optical, etc. in one network platform and accuracy to reliability so that the network performs just
the study of the overall coverage of the system also enough computation to meet the user’s specific demands,
presented several interesting challenges [8]. and no more. The network must consider i tself as a
single e ntity, where collaborative communication
From [9], two algorithms for the efficient placement of protocols remove redundancies in computation and
sensors in a sensor field are presented. The proposed communication, and maintain an even spatial distribution
approach is aimed at optimizing the number of sensors and of energy. Only with such careful attention to the details of
determining their placement to support distributed sensor energy consumption at every point in the design process
networks. The optimization framework is inherently we can expect to see a 1000-node micro sensor network
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that can deliver years of continuous service. In [11], a ranges.Simulation results were provided for the use of
discussion on the hardware and algorithmic enablers for adaptive power control in IP networks that utilize reactive
energy-efficient micro sensor networks is carried out. routing protocols and sleep-mode operation. First,
clustering is useful in “hand-emplaced” networks, but may
One possible next step is a node with infinite lifetime. be less so in “random lay-downs” that contain both high-
Since nodes are essentially sensing energy in the powered and low-power radios. Second, reactive routing-
environment, why not harvest it for operation as well? A protocols with topology-based Adaptive Power Control
“sensor” that efficiently transducers environmental energy improve energy- usage in sensor networks. Third,
into useful electrical energy is an energy harvester. reactive-routing was compatible with sleep-mode
With the refinement of energy harvesting techniques that operation and Adaptive Power Control (APC) [14].
can gather useful energy from vibrations, blasts of
radio energy, and the like, self-powered circuitry is a very From [15], an architecture for large scale low power
real possibility. Energy harvesting schemes developed in sensor network is proposed. Referred to as sensor
the laboratory have generated 10 μW of power from networks with mobile agents (SENMA), SENMA exploits
mechanical vibrations, already enough for low-frequency node redundancies by introducing mobile agents that
DSP (Digital Signal Processor). With continuing advances communicate opportunistically with a large field of
in energy harvesting and improvements in node sensors.The addition of mobile agents
integration, a battery less infinite-lifetime sensor network shifts computationally intensive tasks away from primitive
is possible. It is inevitable that wireless micro sensor sensors to more powerful mobile agents, which enables
networks will mature from laboratory curiosities to energy efficient operations under severely limited power
networks of millions of nodes, deployed through constraints. Mobile agents in SENMA are powerful
paintbrushes, injections, and aircraft. So perhaps it is not hardware units, both in their communication and
far-fetched to envision that the wireless micro sensor processing capability and in their ability to traverse the
network will be the true enabler for ubiquitous computing: sensor network. Examples of mobile agents are
the availability of computational power that is taken for manned/unmanned aerial vehicles, ground vehicles
granted anywhere, at any time. To be truly imperceptible, equipped with sophisticated terminals and power
technology must be omnipresent. And in Ranger Smith’s generators, or specially designed light nodes that can
forest preserve, teeming with many millions of nano- hop around in the network [15].
nodes, it is [11].
6. Security
From [12], an energy-efficient distributed clustering
approach for ad-hoc sensor networks was presented. This From [17, 29], sensor networks are expected to play an
approach is hybrid: cluster heads are randomly selected essential role in the upcoming age of pervasive computing.
based on t heir r esidual energy, a nd no des j oin Due to their constraints in computation, memory, and
clusters such that communication cost is minimized.From power resources, their susceptibility to physical capture,
[13], the focus is on improving the energy consumption of and use of wireless communications, security is a
sensor nodes in large networks. A sensor’s durability and challenge in these networks. The scale of deployments of
reliability depend on its battery’s capacity and on the wireless sensor networks require careful decisions and
energy consuming tasks it performs in order to fulfill its trade-offs among various security measures. Mechanisms to
functions. To achieve this goal. A new “biomorphic” achieve secure communication in these networks are
paradigm that imports solutions to existing engineering considered. Widespread deployment of sensor networks
problems from the biological world is proposed. is on the horizon. Given their versatility, sensor networks
will soon play an important role in critical military
It is shown that this paradigm offers better solutions applications as well as pervade our daily life. However,
through the introduction of an additional type of sensor security concerns on statute a potential stumbling block
nodes and allowing the network to self-organize and to the impending wide deployment of sensor networks.
“learn”. This allows the network to perform better in a Current research on sensor networks is mostly built on a
dynamical environment in accordance to its acquired trusted environment. Several exciting research challenges
knowledge [13]. remain before we can trust sensor networks to take over
important missions [17, 29].
From [14], wireless sensor networks must minimize Depending on the application, a sensor network must
overall power consumption in order to maximize support certain QoS (guaranteed delivery [ 16]) aspects
operational lifetime. The primary focus is on networks such as real-time constraints (e.g., a physical event must
that use a mixture of higher-powered IP-speaking nodes be reported within a certain period of time), robustness
and lower-powered non-IP nodes. Graph-theoretic (i.e., the network should remain operational even if certain
techniques are used to investigate heuristics for well defined failures occur), tamper-resistance (i.e., the
guaranteeing full network connectivity in networks network should remain operational even when subject to
consisting of s ensors with differing transmission deliberate attacks), eavesdropping resistance (i.e., external
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entities cannot eaves drop on data traffic),and organized criticality aspect of the deployment region, a
unobtrusiveness or stealth (i.e., the presence o f the hidden Markov model was applied. In other words, the
network must be hard to detect). These requirements may sensor network adapted to the norm of the dynamics in
impact other dimensions of the design space such as its natural surroundings so that any unusual activities
coverage and resources [24]. From [ 18], current security could be singled out. This IDS is simple to employ,
mechanisms in ad-hoc sensor networks do not guarantee requires minimal processing and data storage. Other
reliable and robust network functionality. Even with these advantages of this model are: Energy efficient algorithm
mechanisms, the sensor nodes could be made non- for detecting intrusions incurring minimum calculations,
operational by malicious attackers or physical break-down robustness with low false-alarm rate as it adapts well to
of the infrastructure. Measurement of the network the surrounding phenomena and flexible to modified task
characteristics in a ’threat’ of network failure is essential to requirements, hard to fool because the data used for
understand the behavior of these networks. Two main detection is unique to its location [19]. From [3], the IEEE
contributions of this research work are the analysis of 802.15.4 draft standard provides for three levels of
performance variation and measuring the after- effects of security: no security of any type (e.g., for advertising
the threats to a sensor network i.e. threat of node failures, kiosk applications); access control lists (non-
attack on nodes etc. Two metrics: connectivity cost and cryptographic security); and symmetric key security,
dis-connectivity co-efficient; the former studies the employing AES-128 (Advanced Encryption Standard).
variation in performance when a network topology is
subject to different threats, while the latter measures the 7. Middleware
impact of the threat(s) on the sensor network.

Simulations [18] were performed on dynamic network From [ 21], current trends in computing include
models vulnerable to adversarial an d non-adversarial increases in both distribution and wireless connectivity,
threats as in any practical deployment scenario. Results leading to highly dynamic, complex environments on top
show that robustness and fault-tolerance (also in [20]) of of which applications must be built. The task of designing
the sensor network topologies comes as a tradeoff with the and ensuring the correctness of applications in these
vulnerability of the network topologies to various environments is becoming more complex. The unified
threats. It was performed a detailed measurement study of goal of much o f the research in distributed wireless
the clustered and unclustered network topology under systems is to provide higher level abstractions of complex
models of threat like node failures, malicious attackers and low-level concepts to application programmers, easing the
mix attack. design and implementation of applications.

Results show that the clustered topology display high A new and growing class of applications for wireless
degree of tolerance to perform efficiently in case of sensor networks require similar complexity encapsulation.
random at tacks, unlike the un clustered topologies. However, sensor networks have some unique
But, this sustained efficient performance comes at the characteristics, including dynamic availability of data
cost of the high losses incurred in case of intentional sources and application quality of service requirements,
attacks on the network. Clustered networks are affected that are not common to other types of applications. These
significantly in case of an attack on the network, unique features, combined with the inherent distribution of
whereas the un clustered topologies perform resiliently in sensors, and limited energy and bandwidth resources,
such a situation. The distribution of connectivity in sensor dictate the need for network functionality and the
networks plays a significant role in the behavior of the individual sensors to be controlled to best serve the
topology in threatening situations [18]. application requirements. In [21], different types of sensor
network applications were described and existing
From [19], in a constant search for efficient security techniques for managing these types of networks are
control and intrusion detection systems (IDS) [28], the discussed. A variety of related middleware is overviewed
ultimate goal in designing protocols remains less resource and that no existing approach provides all the management
consumption while possessing broad coverage and wider tools required by sensor network applications is also
applicability. Wireless sensors have become an excellent argued. To meet this need, A new middleware called
tool for military applications involving intrusion detection, MiLAN was developed. MiLAN allows applications to
perimeter monitoring, information gathering and smart specify a policy for managing the network and sensors, but
logistics support in an unknown deployed area. Since the actual implementation of this policy is effected within
sensor networks are resource-constrained devices, their MiLAN. MiLAN is described and its effectiveness through
design needs to minimize efforts without the design of a sensor-based personal health monitor is
compromising the task’s integrity. For this purpose, in shown. From [22], a sensor information networking
[19] a novel approach for an intrusion detection based on architecture, called SINA, is introduced that facilitates
the structure of naturally occurring ev ents is proposed. querying, monitoring, and tasking of sensor networks.
With t he acquired knowledge distilled from the self- SINA serves the role of middleware that abstracts a
network of sensor nodes as a collection of massively
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distributed objects. SINA’s execution environment Space [26]. Some applications for different areas are
provides a set of configuration and communication shown in table I.
primitives that enable scalable an energy-efficient
organization of and interactions among sensor objects. TABLE I - Some applications for different areas
On top the execution environment is a programmable
substrate that provides mechanisms to create associations
and coordinate activities among sensor nodes. Area Applications
Users then access information within a sensor network Industrial Monitoring and control of
industrial equipment
using declarative queries, or perform tasks using
(LRWPAN[2]).Factory
programming scripts [22]. From [31], integration of sensor
process control and industrial
networks with mobile devices can provide additional automation[22].Manufacturing
flexibility and functionality for a variety of applications monitoring [17].
and can have a significant practical potential by designing Military Military situation awareness
a middleware architecture for integration of sensor nets [22].Sensing intruders on
with mobile devices. As a result of initial research it was bases, detection of enemy
designed a distributed index that adapts to local event and units movements on l and/sea,
lookup query rates to minimize the amount of chemical/biological threats
communication overhead. and offering logistics in urban
warfare [13].Battlefield
surveillance [17].Command,
8. Applications control, communications,
computing, intelligence,
From [24], in the recent past, wireless sensor networks
surveillance, reconnaissance,
have found their way into a wide variety of and targeting systems [26].
applications and systems with vastly varying requirements Location Location awareness (LR-
and characteristics. As a consequence, it is becoming WPAN and Bluetooth
increasingly difficult to discuss typical requirements [2]).Person locator [17].
regarding hardware issues and software support. This is Mobile wireless low rate Tracking of assets, people, or
particularly problematic in a multidisciplinary research networks for precision anything that can move in
area such as wireless sensor networks, where close location various environments,
collaboration between users, application domain experts, including industrial, retail,
hardware designers, and software developers is needed to hospital, residential, and office
implement efficient systems environments, while
maintaining low-rate data
A classification of sample applications according to the communications for
design space is presented, considering deployment, monitoring, messaging, and
mobility, resources, cost, energy, heterogeneity, modality, control [2].Physical world
Monitor and control the
infrastructure, topology, coverage, connectivity, size,
physical world: deployment of
lifetime and QoS. These sample applications are: Great
densely distributed
Duck (bird observation on Great Duck island), ZebraNet, sensor/actuator networks for
Glacier (glacier monitoring), Herding (cattle herding), wide range of biological and
Bathymetry, Ocean (ocean water monitoring), environmental monitoring
Grape (grape monitoring), Cold Chain (cold chain applications, from marine to
management), Avalanche (rescue of avalanche victims), soil and atmospheric contexts;
Vital Sign (vital sign monitoring), Power (power observation of biological,
monitoring), Assembly (parts assembly), Tracking environmental, and artificial
(tracking military vehicles), Mines (self-healing mine systems; environmental
field) and sniper (sniper localization) [24]. Many monitoring of water and soil,
researchers are currently engaged in developing the tagging small animals
technologies needed for different layers of the sensor unobtrusively, and tagging
networks protocol stack. A list of current sensor network small and lightweight objects
research projects is given. Along with the current research in a factory or hospital setting
[23].
projects, we encourage more insight into the problems and
Public safety Sensing and location
intend to motivate a s earch for solutions to the open
determination at disaster
research issues described. These current research projects
sites[2,3].
are (Project name): Sensor Net, WINS, SPINS, SINA, Automotive Tire pressure monitoring
mAMPS, LEACH, SmartDust, SCADDS, PicoRadio, [2,3].Active mobility [24].
PACMAN, Dynamic Sensor Networks, Aware Coordinated vehicle tracking
Home, COUGAR and Device Database Project Data [22].
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Airports Smart badges and tags TABLE II - Some applications with Motes, Smart Dust Sensors
[2,3].Wireless luggage tags and Wireless Sensor Networks
[2].Passive mobility (e.g.,
attached to a moving object Applications Motes, Smart Dust Sensors
not under the control of the and Wireless Sensor
sensor node) [24]. Networks
Agriculture Sensing of soil moisture,
pesticide, herbicide, pH levels In general Indoor/Outdoor
[2,3]. Environmental Monitoring,
Emergency situations Hazardous chemical levels Security and Tracking,
and fires (petroleum sector)
Health and Wellness
[2]. Fire/water detectors [13].
Monitoring disaster areas [26]. For Industrial and Plant-wide telemetry,
Rotating machinery Monitoring and maintenance Vibration Monitoring Compliance and quality
(electric sector) [2]. measurements, Overlay
Seismic Warning systems [13]. monitoring, SCADA
Commercial Managing inventory, For Test andMeasurement Vibration and Machine
monitoring product quality
Health Measurement,
[17,26].
Medical / Health Monitoring people’s locations product e st/qualification,
and health conditions [17]. and scientific research.
Sensors for: blood flow, For advanced wireless Small size, low cost,
respiratory rate, ECG unobtrusive, unattended,
(Electrocardiogram), pulse wireless, onboard processing
xymeter, blood pressure, and Available sensor boards Light and Temperature,
oxygen measurement [21]. Acceleration/Vibration (2-
Monitor patients and assist
disabled patients [26].
Ocean Monitoring fish [17]. Customers benefit by: Reducing the costs of hard- wiring
and maintaining sensor deployments, C learing safety and
regulatory obstacles to running cables in constricted or
dangerous areas, and Improving operationalvisibility thereby
catching problems before they occur and before they create
9. Manufacturers millions of dollars in down-time losses. Some Electric Sector
applications based mainly in monitoring subsystems and
power devices are shown in table III.
Technological pr ogress i n wireless ne tworks, l ow-
power circuit design, and micro electro-mechanical TABLE III - Electric Sector applications (monitoring subsystems
systems (MEMS) has led to the production of tiny sensor and power devices)
devices about a cubic inch in size, bringing us closer to Electric Sector Applications
connecting the physical world with pervasive networks.
These sensor devices do not only have the ability to Power transmission line monitoring
communicate information across the sensor network, but Gas-insulated power transmission line monitoring
also to cooperate in performing more complex tasks, like Power transmission tower monitoring
signal processing, data aggregation and compression
Underground cable monitoring
[25].Motes developed at UC Berkeley and manufactured
by Crossbow Inc. [27] are one example of these tiny In-pipe underground cable monitoring
sensor devices. With their small physical size, sensing and Thermoelectric power plant monitoring (water vapor
computing capabilities, motes are highly practical and
Electricd power generator monitoring
bi d )
currently used for various purposes ranging from
habitat and environmental monitoring to different data Turbogas unit monitoring
collection applications [25]. Some applications with Power plant dam monitoring
Motes, Smart Dust Sensors and Wireless Sensor Power transformer monitoring
Networks are shown in table II.
Power switch monitoring
Current transformer and power transformer monitoring
Power circuit-braker monitoring
Battery bank monitoring
Lightning (Surge) Arrester monitoring
IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 8, Issue 4, No 1, July 2011
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
www.IJCSI.org 596

Some MEMS-based sensors solutions for the Electric wireless communications capabilities. Many routing,
Sector applications are shown in table IV (some sensors power management, and data dissemination protocols
available and some other to be developed). have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy
awareness is an essential design issue. Routing
TABLE IV - MEMS-based sensors solutions for the Electric
Sector Applications protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the
application and network architecture.
MEMS-based sensors
Nano scale strength When compared with now classical MANETs (Mobile Ad
Mechanical bearing hoc Network), sensor networks have different
characteristics, and present different design and
“smart splice” (for high-voltage transmission lines
engineering challenges. One of the main aspects of sensor
i i micromotors
Ultrasound d i (high) frequency vibrations to
networks is that the solutions tend to be very application-
l
Local position h electrical
Vibration to h ll )
energy specific. Wireless ad-hoc sensor networks have great long-
Damage detection (structural elements condition) term economic potential, ability to transform our lives,
and pose many new system-building challenges. Sensor
Acelerometer (seismic) networks also pose a number of new conceptual and
Wind pressure optimization problems. Some, such as location,
Strain gages deployment, and tracking, are fundamental issues, in that
many applications rely on them for needed information.
Gas leakage
Coverage in general, answers the questions about
Intra-pipe inspection (inside the pipe) and between pipes quality of service (surveillance) that can be
l d
Chemical, li drelative lhumidity and
gas, l chemical
i reaction provided by a particular sensor network. The integration
iForce
f sensing
d of multiple types of sensors such as seismic, acoustic,
optical, etc. in one network platform and the study of the
Vibration for geophysical applications overall coverage of the system also presents several
Underground cable displacements (sensors alert interesting challenges. Also, an integrated framework for
i )
Temperature sensor placement that incorporates power management
and fault tolerance. The basic topology desired in data-
Viscosity gathering wireless sensor networks is a s panning tree,
Pressure since the traffic is mainly in the form of many-to-one
Flow flows. A sensor that efficiently transducers
environmental energy into useful electrical energy is an
Oxygen concentration in gases energy harvester. With the refinement of energy
Gases for nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, oxygen, carbon harvesting techniques that can gather useful energy from
id d gases
Boiler escaping b bi id vibrations, blasts of radio energy, and the like, self-
powered circuitry is a very real possibility.
Magnetic field
Voltage Current security mechanisms in ad-hoc sensor networks do
not guarantee reliable and robust network functionality.
Electric field Even with these mechanisms, the sensor nodes could be
Vibrations made non-operational by malicious attackers or physical
Oil composition break-down of the infrastructure. Robustness and fault-
tolerance of the sensor network topologies comes as a
Gases
tradeoff with the vulnerability of the network topologies to
Oil level various threats. In a constant search for efficient security
Micro displacement control and intrusion detection systems (IDS), the
Strain ultimate goal in designing protocols remains less resource
consumption while possessing broad coverage and wider
Concrete structure vibrations applicability. Wireless sensors have become an excellent
Oil humidity tool for military applications involving intrusion detection,
Event counter perimeter monitoring, information gathering and smart
logistics support in an unknown deployed area. Some
Temperature in the joint other applications are: t he design of a sensor-based
personal health monitor, location detection with sensor
10. Conclusion networks, and using wireless sensor networks to perform
In this research work, a survey on Wireless Sensor movement detection. The flexibility, fault tolerance, high
Networks (WSN) and their technologies, standards and sensing fidelity, low cost, and rapid deployment
applications was carried out. Wireless sensor networks characteristics of sensor networks create many new and
consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and exciting application areas for remote sensing. In the future,
IJCSI International Journal of Computer Science Issues, Vol. 8, Issue 4, No 1, July 2011
ISSN (Online): 1694-0814
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