Hawassa University

Institute of Technology
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department

Wireless Network Technologies (ECEg-6062)

Chapter Three
Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks

Outline:
Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks
Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks
Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks
Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks
Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

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Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is an infrastructure
comprised of sensing, computing, and communication
elements that gives an administrator the ability to observe
and react to events and phenomena in a specified
environment.
The environment can be the physical world, a biological
system, or an information technology (IT) framework.
In addition to sensing, one is often also interested in control
and activation.
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Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks.

Fig. A general wireless sensor network

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Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks.

The technology for sensing and control includes:
electric and magnetic field sensors
radio-wave frequency sensors
optical and infrared sensors
motion and location sensors
seismic and pressure sensors
environmental parameter sensors (wind, humidity,
heat) and
security-oriented sensors
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Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks.

Sensor networking is a multidisciplinary area that involves:
radio and networking
signal processing
artificial intelligence
database management
resource optimization
power management algorithms and
operating system technology
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Chapter 3 Wireless Sensor Networks

Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have wide range of applications.
i.

Military Applications
Monitoring friendly forces, equipment, and ammunition
Battlefield surveillance
Reconnaissance of opposing forces and terrain
Targeting
Battle damage assessment
Nuclear, biological, and chemical attack detection
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Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks

ii. Environmental Applications
Forest fire detection
Flood detection
Air pollution monitoring
Landslide detection
Water quality monitoring
iii. Home and Office Applications
Home and office automation
Smart environment
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Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks

iv. Health Applications
Telemonitoring of human physiological data
Tracking and monitoring patients inside a hospital
Drug administration in hospitals
v. Other Commercial Applications
Detecting and monitoring car thefts
Managing inventory control
Vehicle tracking and detection
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Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks

Fig. Wireless sensor network applications.

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Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks

There are four basic components in a sensor network:
i.

an assembly of distributed or localized sensors

ii. an interconnecting network (usually, but not always,

wireless-based)
iii. a central point of information clustering and
iv. a set of computing resources at the central point (or
beyond) to handle data correlation, event trending, status
querying and data mining.

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Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks

The basic architecture of a wireless sensor network is
shown below.

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Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks

Some of the characteristic features of wireless sensor
networks include the following.
Sensor nodes are densely deployed.
Sensor nodes are prone to failures.
The topology of a sensor network changes very
frequently.
Sensor nodes are limited in power, computational
capacities, and memory.

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Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks

The basic components of a wireless sensor node are
shown in the figure below.

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Architecture of Wireless Sensor Networks

The main sensor node components include:
Sensing Unit
Processing Unit
Transceiver Unit
Power Unit
Location finding system (optional)
Power generator (optional)
Mobilizer (optional)
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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Routing deals with data dissemination mechanisms including
directed diffusion, data-centric routing, adaptive routing, and
other specialized routing mechanism.
To address these design requirements, several routing
strategies for WSNs have been proposed.
Routing protocols for WSNs generally fall into three groups:
data-centric, hierarchical, and location-based.

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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

i.

Data-centric routing protocols

Data are typically transmitted from every WN with in the

deployment region and this gives rise to significant
redundancy along with inefficiencies in terms of energy
consumption.
It follows that it is desirable to have routing protocols that
will be able to select a set of sensor nodes and utilize data
aggregation during the relaying of data. This has led to the
development of data-centric routing.
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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Examples of data-centric routing protocols include:
Sensor protocols for information via negotiation (SPIN)
Directed diffusion rumor routing (DDRR)
Gradient-based routing (GBR)
Constrained anisotropic diffusion routing (CADR)

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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

ii. Hierarchical routing protocols
A single-tier network can cause the gateway node to
become overloaded, particularly as the density of sensors
increases.
This, in turn, can cause latency in event status delivery.
The goal of hierarchical routing is to manage the energy
consumption of WNs efficiently by establishing multihop
communication within a particular cluster.

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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Examples of hierarchical routing protocols include:
Energy-adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH)
Threshold-sensitive energy-efficient sensor network
protocol (TEEN)
Adaptive threshold-sensitive energy-efficient sensor
network protocol (APTEEN)
Power-efficient gathering in sensor information systems
(PEGASIS)

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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

iii. Location-based routing protocols
Location information about the WNs can be utilized in
routing data in an energy-efficient manner.
Location information is used to calculate the distance
between two given nodes so that energy consumption can
be determined.
Location-based routing is ideal for mobile ad hoc networks,
but it can also be used for generic WSNs.

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Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Examples of location-based routing protocols include:
Minimum energy communication network (MECN)
Small minimum energy communication network
(SMECN)
Geographic adaptive fidelity (GAF)
Geographic and energy aware routing (GEAR)

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Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

To support the node operation, it is important to have opensource operating systems designed specifically for WSNs.
Such operating systems typically utilize a component-based
architecture that enables rapid implementation and
innovation while minimizing code size as required by the
memory constraints endemic in sensor networks.

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Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

Fig. Basic architecture for wireless sensor networks

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Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

Some of the existing operating systems include:
TinyOS
Mate
MagnetOS
MANTIS
OSPM (or dynamic power management, DPM)
SenOS
EMERALDS, etc

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Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks

Some of the existing middleware software include:
MiLAN (Middleware Linking Applications and Networks)
IrisNet (Internet-Scale Resource-Intensive Sensor
Networks Services)
AMF (Adaptive Middleware Framework)
DSWare (Data Service Middleware)
CLMF (Cluster-Based Lightweight Middleware
Framework)
MSM (Middleware Service for Monitoring)
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