A Survey on Particularity and Practicality of Wireless Sensor Network
A Survey on Particularity and Practicality
of Wirel ess Sensor Network
Fangzhou Chen, Xiaoxiao Wang
November 7, 2012 Abstract: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is one promising network consisted of a group of nodes which classify into 3 categories of collectors, processors, and transmitters. The flexibility and multifunction distinguish WSN from the large family of Wireless Networks and give the wide practicality of fields of military, atmosphere, and home management. It has been known for more people and would stand on a significant status in the future.
1.Introduction
WSN, the abbreviation of Wireless Sensor Network, is as its name constructed by a group of node where each node is connected to one (or sometimes several) sensors. The frame of WSN varies from a simple star network to an advanced multi-hop wireless mesh network. It provides WSN a large range of application and acquires the higher capability of Wireless Sensor Network.
Recent advances in micro-electro- mechanical systems (MEMS) technology, wireless communications, and digital electronics have enabled the development of low-cost, low-power, multifunctional sensor network that contains those sensors small in size and communicating untethered in short distances. The resent sensor is depicted in the two ways of deployment:
●Sensors can be positioned far from the
actual phenomenon, i.e., something
known by sense perception. In this
approach, large sensors that use some
complex techniques to distinguish the
targets from environmental noise are
required.
●Several sensors that perform only sensing
can be deployed. The positions of the
sensors and communications topology
are carefully engineered. They transmit
time series of the sensed phenomenon to
the central nodes where computations are
performed and data are fused.
A large number of sensors are deployed inside the phenomenon, or closely next to it. The position of sensor nodes need not be engineered or pre-determined. This means that sensor network protocols and algorithms must possess self-organizing capabilities. Another unique feature of sensor networks is the cooperative effort of sensor nodes. Instead of sending the raw data to the nodes responsible for the fusion, sensor nodes use their processing abilities to locally carry out simple computations and transmit only the required and partially processed data.
The above described features ensure a wide range of applications for Wireless Sensor Networks. In 2003, WSN was cited as the first place among 10 new technologies that are the
most influential ones in the future life. Which have shown the quite different characteristics with the other categories within the Wireless Network, Wireless Sensor Networks give a better solution of the multiple choice of monitoring, controlling, or investigation on the area of every facet of daily life.
Some of the application areas are health, military, and security. For example, the physiological data about a patient can be monitored remotely by a doctor. While this is more convenient for the patient, it also allows the doctor to better understand the p atient’s current condition. Sensor networks can also be used to detect foreign chemical agents in the air and the water. They can help to identify the type, concentration, and location of pollutants. In essence, sensor networks will provide the end user with intelligence and a better understanding of the environment. We envision that, in future, wireless sensor networks will be an integral part of our lives, more so than the present-day personal computers.
In the nowadays progressive life style, far from the most Wireless Networks taking personal computers as the typical model has reached its topmost usage on the over-development, Wireless Sensor Networks are indeed more like a under-estimated, high-potential source waiting to be explored. How can it be that distinguished to normal Wireless Networks? The next section will give the explanation.
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To effectively emphasize the differences among Wireless Sensor Network and other kinds of Wireless Networks, the most used 3 Wireless Networks are taken as examples to make a comparison with Wireless Sensor Networks. Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN), Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN), and Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) are most typical models of Wireless Networks.
●Wireless Wide Area Network is a form of
Wireless Network with the larger area of
a network compared to a local area
network. A Wireless W AN is provided by
a wireless service provider often by using
mobile telecommunication cellular
network technologies.
●Wireless Personal Area Network is one
network for interconnecting devices
centered around on an individual person's
workspace. Wireless PAN is based on the
standard IEEE 802.15. The two kinds of
wireless technologies used for WPAN are
Bluetooth and Infrared Data Association.
●Wireless Mesh Network is a
communications network made up of
radio nodes organized in a mesh topology.
WMN often consists of mesh clients,
mesh routers and gateways, which be
implemented with various wireless
technology including 802.11, 802.15,
802.16, cellular technologies or
combinations of more than one type.
Features of Wireless Networks are always judged on the dimensions of trans- mission technology, construction topology, and exception tolerance. The transmission media are chosen by the function of the particular network. WWAN is set in the larger range of space where the relatively long wavelength (especially 1.25 MHz, 5 MHz or 10 MHz) performs better than others. It is a hint of same to WMN; but WMN suits in the comparatively small region like Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) which applies IEEE 802.11 standards using 2.4 GHz ISM band. The WPAN is different for the usage of Bluetooth and Infrared Data Association. The Wireless Sensor Network just varies in a range of 6.8 MHz to even 245 GHz suiting any
circumstances of application.
Comparing topology, WPAN undoubted star network, WWAN being star or two-level hierarchy, WMN as its name as mesh topology, and WSN sets complicated in deployment which considers the distribution, multi-hop and merges the signals. The exception tolerance is not only expressed by the construction, but jointing the code interpretation. In general, WMN owns the best function, then WSN, and then WW AN, and the least WPAN. This ranking is only based on the technology and topology, without considering the influence of coding and decoding.
Sensor Network does excellent job, after considering the wide potential applying areas. It is almost for sure that WSN has a bright future and leading or inspiring the further researching and improving.
3. Application
Sensor networks may consist of many different types of sensors such as seismic, low sampling rate magnetic, thermal, visual, infrared, acoustic and radar, which are able to monitor a wide variety of ambient conditions that include temperature, humidity, vehicular movement, lightning condition, pressure, soil makeup, noise levels, the presence or absence
of certain kinds of objects, mechanical stress levels on attached objects, and the current characteristics such as speed, direction, and size of an object.
Military applications
Wireless sensor networks can be an integral part of military command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and targeting systems. The rapid deployment, self -organization and fault tolerance characteristics of sensor networks make them a very promising sensing technique for military C4ISRT. Since sensor networks are based on the dense deployment of disposable
some nodes by hostile actions does not affect a military operation as much as the destruction of a traditional sensor, which makes sensor networks concept a better approach for battlefields. Some of the military applications of sensor networks are monitoring friendly forces, equipment and ammunition; battlefield surveillance; reconnaissance of opposing forces and terrain; targeting; battle damage assessment; and nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) attack detection and reconnaissance.
Environmental applications
Some environmental applications of sensor networks include tracking the
movements of birds, small animals, and insects; monitoring environmental conditions that affect crops and livestock; irrigation; macro instruments for large-scale Earth monitoring and planetary exploration; chemical/biological detection; precision agriculture; biological, Earth, and environmental monitoring in marine, soil, and atmospheric contexts; forest fire detection; meteorological or geophysical research; bio-complexity mapping of the environment; and pollution study.
Home applications
Home automation: As technology advances, smart sensor nodes and actuators can be buried in appliances, such as vacuum cleaners, micro-wave ovens, refrigerators, and VCRs. These sensor nodes inside the domestic devices can interact with each other and with the external network via the Internet or Satellite. They allow end users to manage home devices locally and remotely more easily.
Smart environment: The design of smart environment can have two different perspectives, i.e., human-centered and technology-centered. For human-centered, a smart environment has to adapt the needs of the end users in terms of input/output capabilities. For technology-centered, new hardware technologies, networking solutions, and middleware services have to be developed.
A scenario of how sensor nodes can be used to create a smart environment is described in. The sensor nodes can be embedded into furniture and appliances, and they can communicate with each other and the room server. The room server can also communicate with other room servers to learn about the services they ordered, e.g., printing, scanning, and faxing. These room servers and sensor nodes can be integrated with existing embedded devices to become self-organizing, self-regulated, and adaptive systems based on control theory models as described in. Another example of smart environment is the ‘‘Residential Laboratory’’ at Georgia Institute of Technology. The computing and sensing in this environment has to be reliable, persistent, and transparent.
We categorize the applications into military, environment, and home areas. It is possible to expand this classi?cation with more categories such as space exploration, chemical processing and disaster relief. It’s a wide-sued technology.
4.Conclusion
We discussed the state of the art of research on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), and outlined the main research conclusions and the range of adaptation. Particularity and practicality for the development of WMSNs were surveyed, and expected applications on the multi-facet of the human society are listed with examples. To exhibit the advantages of WSN, we set it together with the other three well-known network models in order to compare each other on the dimensions of technology, topology and error tolerance. We believe that this research area will attract the attention of many other researchers to get a further study intensively and that it will push one step ahead over our ability to observe the physical environment and interact with it.