Wireless sensor network

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless

network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous
devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical
or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound,
vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different
locations. The development of wireless sensor networks
was originally motivated by military applications such as
battlefield surveillance. However, wireless sensor
networks are now used in many civilian application
areas, including environment and habitat monitoring,
healthcare applications, home automation, and traffic
control.
In addition to one or more sensors, each node in a sensor
network is typically equipped with a radio transceiver or
other wireless communications device, a small
microcontroller, and an energy source, usually a battery.
The size of a single sensor node can vary from shoebox-
sized nodes down to devices the size of grain of dust.
The cost of sensor nodes is similarly variable, ranging
from hundreds of dollars to a few cents, depending on
the size of the sensor network and the complexity
required of individual sensor nodes. Size and cost
constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding
constraints on resources such as energy, memory,
computational speed and bandwidth.
In computer science and telecommunications, wireless
sensor networks are an active research area with
numerous workshops and conferences arranged each
year.
 Sensor node

Sensor Node Architecture

A sensor node, also known as a mote (chiefly in North
America), is a node in a wireless sensor network that is
capable of performing some processing, gathering
sensory information and communicating with other
connected nodes in the network. The typical architecture
of the sensor node is shown in figure.

History of Sensor Node

History of development of sensor nodes dates back to
1998 in Smartdust project. One of the objectives of this
project is to create autonomous sensing and
communication in a cubic millimeter. Though this
project ended early on, it has given birth to a few more
research projects. They are Berkeley NEST and CENS.
The researchers involved in these projects coined the
term 'mote' to refer to a sensor node.
 Components of a Sensor Node
The main components of a sensor node as seen from the
figure are microcontroller, transceiver, external memory,
power source and one or more sensors.

Microcontroller
Main article: Microcontroller.
Microcontroller performs tasks, processes data and
controls the functionality of other components in the
sensor node. Other alternatives that can be used as a
controller are: General purpose desktop microprocessor,
Digital signal processors, Field Programmable Gate
Array and Application-specific integrated circuit.
Microcontrollers are most suitable choice for sensor
node. Each of the four choices has their own advantages
and disadvantages. Microcontrollers are the best choices
for embedded systems. Because of their flexibility to
connect to other devices, programmable, power
consumption is less, as these devices can go to sleep state
and part of controller can be active. In general purpose
microprocessor the power consumption is more than the
microcontroller, therefore it is not a suitable choice for
sensor node. Digital Signal Processors are appropriate for
broadband wireless communication. But in Wireless
Sensor Networks, the wireless communication should be
modest i.e., simpler, easier to process modulation and
signal processing tasks of actual sensing of data is less
complicated. Therefore the advantages of DSP's is not
that much of importance to wireless sensor node. Field
Programmable Gate Arrays can be reprogrammed and
reconfigured according to requirements, but it takes time
and energy. Therefore FPGA's is not advisable.
Application Specific Integrated Circuits are specialized
processors designed for a given application. ASIC's
provide the functionality in the form of hardware, but
microcontrollers provide it through software.

Transceiver
Sensor nodes make use of ISM band which gives free
radio, huge spectrum allocation and global availability.
The various choices of wireless transmission media are
Radio frequency, Optical communication (Laser) and
Infrared. Laser requires less energy, but needs line of
sight for communication and also sensitive to
atmospheric conditions. Infrared like laser, needs no
antenna but is limited in its broadcasting capacity. Radio
Frequency (RF) based communication is the most
relevant that fits to most of the WSN applications.
WSN’s use the communication frequencies between
about 433 MHz and 2.4 GHz. The functionality of both
transmitter and receiver are combined into a single
device know as transceivers are used in sensor nodes.
Transceivers lack unique identifier. The operational
states are Transmit, Receive, Idle and Sleep.
Current generation radios have a built-in state machines
that perform this operation automatically. Radios used in
transceivers operate in four different modes: Transmit,
Receive, Idle, and Sleep. Radios operating in Idle mode
results in power consumption, almost equal to power
consumed in Receive mode. Thus it is better to
completely shutdown the radios rather than in the Idle
mode when it is not Transmitting or Receiving. And also
significant amount of power is consumed when
switching from Sleep mode to Transmit mode to transmit
a packet.
 External Memory
From an energy perspective, the most relevant kinds of
memory are on-chip memory of a microcontroller and
FLASH memory - off-chip RAM is rarely if ever used.
Flash memories are used due to its cost and storage
capacity. Memory requirements are very much
application dependent. Two categories of memory based
on the purpose of storage a) User memory used for
storing application related or personal data. b) Program
memory used for programming the device. This memory
also contains identification data of the device if any.

Power Source
Power consumption in the sensor node is for the Sensing,
Communication and Data Processing. More energy is
required for data communication in sensor node. Energy
expenditure is less for sensing and data processing. The
energy cost of transmitting 1 Kibit a distance of 100 m is
approximately the same as that for the executing 3
million instructions by 100 million instructions per
second/W processor. Power is stored either in Batteries
or Capacitors. Batteries are the main source of power
supply for sensor nodes. Namely two types of batteries
used are chargeable and non-rechargeable. They are also
classified according to electrochemical material used for
electrode such as NiCd(nickel-cadmium), NiZn(nickel-
zinc), Nimh (nickel metal hydride), and Lithium-Ion.
Current sensors are developed which are able to renew
their energy from solar or vibration energy. Two major
power saving policies used are Dynamic Power
Management (DPM) and Dynamic Voltage Scaling
(DVS)[5]. DPM takes care of shutting down parts of
sensor node which are not currently used or active. DVS
scheme varies the power levels depending on the non-
deterministic workload. By varying the voltage along
with the frequency, it is possible to obtain quadratic
reduction in power consumption.

Sensors
Sensors are hardware devices that produce measurable
response to a change in a physical condition like
temperature and pressure. Sensors sense or measure
physical data of the area to be monitored. The continual
analog signal sensed by the sensors is digitized by
Analog-to-Digital converter and sent to controllers for
further processing. Characteristics and requirements of
Sensor node should be small size, consume extremely
low energy, operate in high volumetric densities, be
autonomous and operate unattended, and be adaptive to
the environment. As wireless sensor nodes are micro-
electronic sensor device, can only be equipped with a
limited power source of less than 0.5 Ah and 1.2 V.
Sensors are classified into three categories.
• Passive, Omni Directional Sensors: Passive
sensors sense the data without actually manipulating
the environment by active probing. They are self
powered i.e energy is needed only to amplify their
analog signal. There is no notion of “direction”
involved in these measurements.
• Passive, narrow-beam sensors: These sensors
are passive but they have well-defined notion of
direction of measurement. Typical example is
‘camera’.
• Active Sensors: These group of sensors
actively probe the environment, for example, a
 sonar or radar sensor or some type of seismic
sensor, which generate shock waves by small
explosions.
The overall theoretical work on WSN’s considers
Passive, Omni directional sensors. Each sensor node has
a certain area of coverage for which it can reliably and
accurately report the particular quantity that it is
observing. Several sources of power consumption in
sensors are a) Signal sampling and conversion of
physical signals to electrical ones, b) signal conditioning,
and c) analog-to-digital conversion. Spatial density of
sensor nodes in the field may be as high as 20 nodes/
m3 .

List of Commercial Sensor

Nodes/Motes
There are two kinds of sensor nodes used in the sensor
network. One is the normal sensor node deployed to
sense the phenomena and the other is gateway node that
interfaces sensor network to the external world.
An overview of commonly used sensor network platforms, components, technology
and related topics is available in the SNM - Sensor Network
Museumtm
Applications
The applications for WSNs are many and varied. They
are used in commercial and industrial applications to
monitor data that would be difficult or expensive to
monitor using wired sensors. They could be deployed in
wilderness areas, where they would remain for many
years (monitoring some environmental variables) without
the need to recharge/replace their power supplies. They
could form a perimeter about a property and monitor the
progression of intruders (passing information from one
node to the next). There are many uses for WSNs.
Typical applications of WSNs include monitoring,
tracking, and controlling. Some of the specific
applications are habitat monitoring, object tracking,
nuclear reactor controlling, fire detection, traffic
monitoring, etc. In a typical application, a WSN is
scattered in a region where it is meant to collect data
through its sensor nodes.
• Environmental monitoring[4]
• Habitat monitoring
• Acoustic detection
• Seismic Detection
• Military surveillance
• Inventory tracking
• Medical monitoring
• Smart spaces
• Process Monitoring
• Structural health monitoring
• Health Monitoring

Area monitoring
Area monitoring is a typical application of WSNs. In
area monitoring, the WSN is deployed over a region
where some phenomenon is to be monitored. As an
example, a large quantity of sensor nodes could be
deployed over a battlefield to detect enemy intrusion
instead of using landmines. When the sensors detect the
event being monitored (heat, pressure, sound, light,
electro-magnetic field, vibration, etc), the event needs to
be reported to one of the base stations, which can take
appropriate action (e.g., send a message on the internet or
to a satellite). Depending on the exact application,
different objective functions will require different data-
propagation strategies, depending on things such as need
for real-time response, redundancy of the data (which
can be tackled via data aggregation techniques), need for
security, etc.

Environmental monitoring
Our environment is undergoing frightening changes at a
global scale, and many dramatic climatic accidents have
recently drawn a lot of attention on ecology and
environmental monitoring. However, the current lack of
appropriate observations prevents environmental
researchers from addressing crucial questions about these
changes and their actual consequences.
SensorScope is a new generation of measurement
system based on a multi-hop wireless sensor network
with built-in capacity to produce high temporal and
spatial density measures. By gathering the most recent
results from a large range of research domains, we aim at
providing the fundamental tools that will help in taking
care of our environment.
Unique characteristics of a WSN are:
• Small-scale sensor nodes
• Limited power they can
harvest or store
• Harsh environmental
conditions
• Node failures
• Mobility of nodes
• Dynamic network topology
• Communication failures
• Heterogeneity of nodes
• Large scale of deployment
• Unattended operation
Sensor nodes can be imagined as small computers,
extremely basic in terms of their interfaces and their
components. They usually consist of a processing unit
with limited computational power and limited memory,
sensors (including specific conditioning circuitry), a
communication device (usually radio transceivers or
alternatively optical), and a power source usually in the
form of a battery. Other possible inclusions are energy
harvesting modules, secondary ASICs, and possibly
secondary communication devices (e.g. RS232 or USB).
The base stations are one or more distinguished
components of the WSN with much more computational,
energy and communication resources. They act as a
gateway between sensor nodes and the end user.

Hardware
The main challenge is to produce low cost and tiny
sensor nodes. With respect to these objectives, current
sensor nodes are mainly prototypes. Miniaturization and
low cost are understood to follow from recent and future
progress in the fields of MEMS and NEMS. Some of the
existing sensor nodes are given below. Some of the
nodes are still in research stage.
An overview of commonly used sensor network
platforms, components, technology and related topics is
available in the SNM - Sensor Network Museumtm.

Standards
While mainstream computers have an abundance of
standards, the only official standards that have been
adopted for wireless sensor networks are 6lowpan [5] and
WirelessHART . Below are some other standards being
investigated for use by researchers in the field:
• ZigBee
• Wibree

ZigBee
ZigBee is the name of a specification for a suite of high
level communication protocols using small, low-power
digital radios based on the IEEE 802.15.4 standard for
wireless personal area networks (WPANs). ZigBee is
targeted at RF applications that require a low data rate,
long battery life, and secure networking.

Uses
ZigBee protocols are intended for use in embedded
applications requiring low data rates and low power
consumption. ZigBee's current focus is to define a
general-purpose, inexpensive, self-organizing, mesh
network that can be used for industrial control,
embedded sensing, medical data collection, smoke and
intruder warning, building automation, home automation,
etc. The resulting network will use very small amounts of
power so individual devices might run for a year or two
using the originally installed battery.

Device types
There are three different types of ZigBee device:
• ZigBee coordinator(ZC): The most capable
device, the coordinator forms the root of the
network tree and might bridge to other networks.
There is exactly one ZigBee coordinator in each
network since it is the device that started the
network originally. It is able to store information
about the network, including acting as the Trust
Centre & repository for security keys.
• ZigBee Router (ZR): As well as running an
application function a router can act as an
intermediate router, passing data from other devices.
• ZigBee End Device (ZED): Contains just
enough functionality to talk to its parent node
(either the coordinator or a router); it cannot relay
data from other devices. This relationship allows the
node to be asleep a significant amount of the time
thereby giving you the much quoted long battery
life. A ZED requires the least amount of memory,
and therefore can be less expensive to manufacture
than a ZR or ZC.
 Software and hardware
The software is designed to be easy to develop on small,
cheap microprocessors. The radio design used by ZigBee
has been carefully optimized for low cost in large scale
production. It has few analog stages and uses digital
circuits wherever possible.
Even though the radios themselves are cheap, the ZigBee
Qualification Process involves a full validation of the
requirements of the physical layer. This amount of
concern about the Physical Layer has multiple benefits,
since all radios derived from that semiconductor mask set
would enjoy the same RF characteristics. On the other
hand, an uncertified physical layer that malfunctions
could cripple the battery lifespan of other devices on a
ZigBee network. Where other protocols can mask poor
sensitivity or other esoteric problems in a fade
compensation response, ZigBee radios have very tight
engineering constraints: they are both power and
bandwidth constrained. Thus, radios are tested to the ISO
17025 standard with guidance given by Clause 6 of the
802.15.4-2003 Standard. Most vendors plan to integrate
the radio and microcontroller onto a single chip. (Some
interesting links: look for the USB Dongle)

Wibree

Wibree is a digital radio technology (intended to become

an open standard of wireless communications) designed
for ultra low power consumption (button cell batteries)
within a short range (10 meters / 30 ft) based around
low-cost transceiver microchips in each device

Technical information
Wibree is designed to work side-by-side with and
complement Bluetooth. It operates in 2.4 GHz ISM band
with physical layer bit rate of 1 Mbit/s. Main applications
include devices such as wrist watches, wireless
keyboards, toys and sports sensors where low power
consumption is a key design requirement. The
technology was announced on 3 October 2006 by Nokia .
Partners that currently license the technology and
cooperate in defining the specification are Nordic
Semiconductor, Broadcom Corporation, CSR and Epson.
Other contributors are Suunto and Taiyo Yuden.
Wibree is not designed to replace Bluetooth, but rather to
complement the technology in supported devices.
Wibree-enabled devices will be smaller and more
energy-efficient than their Bluetooth counterparts. This is
especially important in devices such as wristwatches,
where Bluetooth models may be too large and heavy to
be comfortable. Replacing Bluetooth with Wibree will
make the devices closer in dimensions and weight to
current standard wristwatches.
Bob Iannucci, head of Nokia's Research Centre, claims
the technology is up to ten times more efficient than
Bluetooth. Reportedly, it will have an output power
around -6 dBm . Nordic Semiconductor is aiming to
sample Wibree chips during the second half of 2007.
 Ultra-wideband
Ultra-wideband (UWB, ultra-wide band, ultraband,
etc.) is a radio technology that can be used for short-
range high-bandwidth communications by using a large
portion of the radio spectrum in a way that doesn't
interfere with other more traditional 'narrow band' uses.
It also has applications in radar imaging, precision
positioning and tracking technology.
Ultra-Wideband (UWB) may be used to refer to any
radio technology having bandwidth exceeding the lesser
of 500 MHz or 20% of the arithmetic center frequency,
according to Federal Communications Commission
(FCC). This article discusses the meaning of Ultra-
wideband in the field of radio communications.

Applications
Due to the extremely low emission levels currently
allowed by regulatory agencies, UWB systems tend to be
short-range and indoors. However, due to the short
duration of the UWB pulses, it is easier to engineer
extremely high data rates, and data rate can be readily
traded for range by simply aggregating pulse energy per
data bit using either simple integration or by coding
techniques. Conventional OFDM technology can also be
used subject to the minimum bandwidth requirement of
the regulations. High data rate UWB can enable wireless
monitors, the efficient transfer of data from digital
camcorders, wireless printing of digital pictures from a
camera without the need for an intervening personal
computer, and the transfer of files among cell phone
handsets and other handheld devices like personal digital
audio and video players.
UWB is used as a part of location systems and real time
location systems. The precision capabilities combined
with the very low power makes it ideal for certain radio
frequency sensitive environments such as hospitals and
healthcare. Another benefit of UWB is the short
broadcast time which enables implementers of the
technology to install orders of magnitude more
transmitter tags in an environment relative to competitive
technologies. USA based Parco Merged Media
Corporation was the first systems developer to deploy a
commercial version of this system in a Washington, DC
hospital.
UWB is also used in "see-through-the-wall" precision
radar imaging technology, precision positioning and
tracking (using distance measurements between radios),
and precision time-of-arrival-based localization
approaches. It exhibits excellent efficiency with a spatial
capacity of approximately 10,000,000,000,000 bit/s/m².
UWB is a possible technology for use in personal area
networks and appears in IEEE 802.15.3a draft PAN
standard.

Bluetooth
Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless
personal area networks (PANs). Bluetooth provides a
way to connect and exchange information between
devices such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers,
digital cameras, and video game consoles over a secure,
globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency. The
Bluetooth specifications are developed and licensed by
the Bluetooth Special Interest Group.

Uses

A typical Bluetooth mobile phone headset

Bluetooth is a standard and communications protocol
primarily designed for low power consumption, with a
short range (power-class-dependent: 1 meter, 10 meters,
100 meters) based on low-cost transceiver microchips in
each device.
Bluetooth enables these devices to communicate with
each other when they are in range. The devices use a
radio communications system, so they do not have to be
in line of sight of each other, and can even be in other
rooms, as long as the received transmission is powerful
enough.

List of applications
More prevalent applications of Bluetooth include:
• Wireless control of and
communication between a
mobile phone and a hands-free
headset or car kit. This was one
of the earliest applications to
become popular.
• Wireless networking
between PCs in a confined
space and where little
bandwidth is required.
• Wireless communications
with PC input and output
devices, the most common
being the mouse, keyboard and
printer.
• Transfer of files between
devices with OBEX.
• Transfer of contact details,
calendar appointments, and
reminders between devices with
OBEX.
• Replacement of traditional
wired serial communications in
test equipment, GPS receivers,
medical equipment, bar code
scanners, and traffic control
devices.
• For controls where infrared
was traditionally used.
• Sending small
advertisements from Bluetooth
enabled advertising hoardings
to other, discoverable,
Bluetooth devices.
• Seventh-generation game
consoles—Nintendo Wii[3],
Sony PlayStation 3—use
 Bluetooth for their respective
wireless controllers.
• Receiving commercial
advertisements ("spam") via a
kiosk, e.g. at a movie theatre or
lobby

Wireless USB
Wireless USB (WuzzBee) is a short-range, high-
bandwidth wireless radio communication protocol
created by the Wireless USB Promoter Group. Wireless
USB is sometimes abbreviated as "WUSB", although the
USB Implementers Forum discourages this practice and
instead prefers to call the technology "Certified Wireless
USB" to differentiate it from competitors (see below,
"Competitors"). Wireless USB is based on the WiMedia
Alliance's Ultra-WideBand (UWB) common radio
platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at
distances up to 3 meters and 110 Mbit/s at up to 10
meters. It was designed to operate in the 3.1 to 10.6 GHz
frequency range, although local regulatory policies may
restrict the legal operating range for any given country.

Uses
Wireless USB is used in game controllers, printers,
scanners, digital cameras, MP3 players, hard disks and
flash drives. It is also suitable for transferring parallel
video streams
Software
Energy is the scarcest resource of WSN nodes, and it
determines the lifetime of WSNs. WSNs are meant to be
deployed in large numbers in various environments,
including remote and hostile regions, with ad-hoc
communications as key. For this reason, algorithms and
protocols need to address the following issues:
• Lifetime maximization
• Robustness and fault tolerance
• Self-configuration
Some of the "hot" topics in WSN software research are:
• Security
• Mobility (when sensor nodes or base stations
are moving)
• Middleware: the design of middle-level
primitives between the software and the hardware

Operating systems
Operating systems for wireless sensor network nodes are
typically less complex than general-purpose operating
systems both because of the special requirements of
sensor network applications and because of the resource
constraints in sensor network hardware platforms. For
example, sensor network applications are usually not
interactive in the same way as applications for PCs.
Because of this, the operating system does not need to
include support for user interfaces. Furthermore, the
resource constraints in terms of memory and memory
mapping hardware support make mechanisms such as
virtual memory either unnecessary or impossible to
implement.
Wireless sensor network hardware is not different from
traditional embedded systems and it is therefore possible
to use embedded operating systems such as eCos or
uC/OS for sensor networks. However, such operating
systems are often designed with real-time properties.
Unlike traditional embedded operating systems,
however, operating systems specifically targeting sensor
networks often do not have real-time support.
TinyOS[7] is perhaps the first[citation needed] operating system
specifically designed for wireless sensor networks.
Unlike most other operating systems, TinyOS is based on
an event-driven programming model instead of
multithreading. TinyOS programs are composed into
event handlers and tasks with run to completion-
semantics. When an external event occurs, such as an
incoming data packet or a sensor reading, TinyOS calls
the appropriate event handler to handle the event. Event
handlers can post tasks that are scheduled by the TinyOS
kernel some time later. Both the TinyOS system and
programs written for TinyOS are written in a special
programming language called nesC which is an
extension to the C programming language. NesC is
designed to detect race conditions between tasks and
event handlers.
There are also operating systems that allow programming
in C. Examples of such operating systems include
Contiki, MANTIS, BTnut, SOS and Nano-RK. Contiki is
designed to support loading modules over the network
and supports run-time loading of standard ELF files[. The
Contiki kernel is event-driven, like TinyOS, but the
system supports multithreading on a per-application
basis. Furthermore, Contiki includes protothreads that
provide a thread-like programming abstraction but with a
very small memory overhead. Unlike the event-driven
Contiki kernel, the MANTIS and Nano-RK kernels are
based on preemptive multithreading. With preemptive
multithreading, applications do not need to explicitly
yield the microprocessor to other processes. Instead, the
kernel divides the time between the active processes and
decides which process that currently can be run which
makes application programming easier. Nano-RK is a
real-time resource kernel that allows fine grained control
of the way tasks get access to CPU time, networking and
sensors. Like TinyOS and Contiki, SOS is an event-
driven operating system. The prime feature of SOS is its
support for loadable modules. A complete system is built
from smaller modules, possibly at run-time. To support
the inherent dynamism in its module interface, SOS also
focuses on support for dynamic memory management.
BTnut is based on cooperative multi-threading and plain
C code, and is packaged with a developer kit and tutorial

Middleware
There is considerable research effort currently invested
in the design of middleware for WSN's.[3] In general
approaches can be classified into distributed database,
mobile agents, and event-based.[22]

Programming languages
Programming the sensor nodes is difficult when
compared to normal computer systems. The resource
constrained nature of these nodes gives rise to new
programming models. Although most nodes are currently
programmed in C.
 • c@t (Computation at a point in space (@)
Time )
• DCL (Distributed Compositional Language)
• galsC
• nesC
• Protothreads
• SNACK
• SQTL

Algorithms
WSNs are composed of a large number of sensor nodes,
therefore, an algorithm for a WSN is implicitly a
distributed algorithm. In WSNs the scarcest resource is
energy, and one of the most energy-expensive operations
is data transmission. For this reason, algorithmic research
in WSN mostly focuses on the study and design of
energy aware algorithms for data transmission from the
sensor nodes to the base stations. Data transmission is
usually multi-hop (from node to node, towards the base
stations), due to the polynomial growth in the energy-
cost of radio transmission with respect to the
transmission distance.
The algorithmic approach to WSN differentiates itself
from the protocol approach by the fact that the
mathematical models used are more abstract, more
general, but sometimes less realistic than the models
used for protocol design.
 Simulators
There are platforms specifically designed to simulate
Wireless Sensor Networks, like TOSSIM, which is a part
of TinyOS. Traditional network simulators like ns-2 have
also been used. An extensive list of simulation tools for
Wireless Sensor Networks can be found at the CRUISE
WSN Simulation Tool Knowledgebase

Data visualization
The data gathered from wireless sensor networks is usually saved in the form of
numerical data in a central base station. There are many programs, like TosGUI ,
SenSor and MonSense,GSN that facilitate the viewing of these large
amounts of data. Additionally, the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is specifying
standards for interoperability interfaces and metadata encodings that enable real time
integration of heterogeneous sensor webs into the Internet, allowing any individual to
monitor or control Wireless Sensor Networks through a Web Browser.