Abstract:

The wireless sensor network includes a

plurality of nodes transitioning between a
sleeping state, probing state, and working
state. The management method enables the
transducer, microcomputer, transceiver and

nodes to make a state transition according to power source. The transducer generates
sent and received messages. electrical signals based on sensed physical
effects and phenomena. The microcomputer
Introduction
processes and stores the sensor output. The

A sensor network is a group of transceiver, which can be hard-wired or

specialized transducers with a wireless, receives commands from a central

communications infrastructure computer and transmits data to that computer.

intended to monitor and record The power for each sensor node is derived

conditions at diverse locations. from the electric utility or from a battery.

Commonly monitored parameters Characteristics

are temperature, humidity, pressure, Unique characteristics of a WSN
wind direction and speed, include:
illumination intensity, vibration • Limited power they can
intensity, sound intensity, power-line harvest or store
voltage, chemical concentrations, • Ability to withstand harsh
pollutant levels and vital body
environmental conditions
functions.
• Ability to cope with node

A sensor network consists of multiple failures

detection stations called sensor nodes, each of • Mobility of nodes
which is small, lightweight and portable. • Dynamic network topology
Every sensor node is equipped with a • Communication failures
• Heterogeneity of nodes
• Large scale of deployment
• Unattended operation
 • Node capacity is scalable, complex than general-purpose
only limited by bandwidth of operating systems both because
gateway node. 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
The figure shows the complexity
as virtual memory either
of wireless sensor networks,
unnecessary or impossible to
which generally consist of a data
implement.
acquisition network and a data
A wireless sensor network
distribution network, monitored
requires communication
and controlled by a management
networks, wireless sensor
center. The plethora of available
networks and smart sensors,
technologies makes even the
physical transduction principles,
selection of components difficult,
commercially available wireless
let alone the design of a
sensor systems, self-organization,
consistent, reliable, robust overall
signal processing and decision-
system.
making, and finally some
concepts for home automation.
Working
Working for wireless sensor
Communication Network
network nodes are typically less
A communication network is
composed of nodes, each of
which has computing power and
can transmit and receive
messages over communication
links, wireless or cabled. The
basic network topologies are
shown in the figure and include
fully connected, mesh, star, ring,
tree, bus. A single network may
Communication Protocols and
consist of several interconnected
Routing
subnets of different topologies.
The topics of communication
Networks are further classified as
protocols and routing are complex
Local Area Networks (LAN), e.g.
and require basics useful for
inside one building, or Wide Area
understanding sensor nets are
Networks (WAN).
presented here. Each message
Fully connected networks
generally has a header identifying
suffer from problems of NP-
its source node, destination node,
complexity as additional nodes
length of the data field, and other
are added, the number of links
information. This is used by the
increases exponentially.
nodes in proper routing of the
Therefore, for large networks, the
message. In encoded messages,
routing problem is
parity bits may be included. In
computationally intractable even
packet routing networks, each
with the availability of large
message is broken into packets of
amounts of computing power.
fixed length.

When a node desires to transmit a

message, handshaking protocols
with the destination node are
used to improve reliability. The detection and correction. Routing
source and destination might and flow control are performed in
transmit alternately as follows: the Network Layer.
request to send, ready to receive,
send message, message received.
Multiple Access Protocols.
When multiple nodes desire to
transmit, protocols are needed to
avoid collisions and lost data. If it
receives an acknowledgement, all
is well. If not, the node waits a
random time and re-transmits the Routing.
message. Since a distributed network has
Open Systems multiple nodes and services many
Interconnection Reference messages, and each node is a
Model (OSI/RM). The shared resource, many decisions
International Standards must be made. There may be
Organization (ISO) OSI/RM multiple paths from the source to
architecture specifies the relation the destination. Therefore,
between messages transmitted in message routing is an important
a communication network and topic. The main performance
applications measures affected by the routing
programs run by the users. The scheme are throughput (quantity
development of this open of service) and average packet
standard has encouraged the delay (quality of service).
adoption by different developers Routing schemes:
of standardized compatible Fixed routing schemes often
systems interfaces. The figure use Routing Tables that dictate
shows the seven layers of OSI/RM. the next node to be routed to,
Each layer is self-contained, so given the current message
that it can be modified without location and the destination node.
unduly affecting other layers. The Adaptive routing schemes
Transport Layer provides error depend on the current network
status and can take into account distributed sensors in remote site
various performance measures, environments (e.g. sensors
including cost of transmission dropped from aircraft for
over a given link, congestion of a personnel/vehicle surveillance),
given link, reliability of a path, there is a focus on increasing the
and time of transmission. lifetimes of sensor nodes through
Flow Control power generation, power
The objectives of flow control are conservation, and power
to protect the network from management. Current research is
problems related to overload and in designing small MEMS
speed mismatches, and to (microelectromechanical systems)
maintain QoS, efficiency, fairness, RF components for transceivers,
and freedom from deadlock. If a including capacitors, inductors,
given node A has high priority, its etc.
messages might be preferentially
routed in every case, so that
competing nodes are choked off
as the traffic of increases. In
Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) schemes (Tahoe and Reno)
a source linearly increases its
transmission rate as long as all its
sent messages are acknowledged
for. When it detects a lost packet,
it exponentially decreases its
transmission rate. Since lost
packets depend on congestion,
TCP automatically decreases
transmissions when congestion is
detected.
Power Management
With the advent of ad hoc
networks of geographically