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Wireless Sensor Networks - Introduction

1. Sensors in WSN
2. Sensing node
3. Wireless Sensor Netwworks
4. Communication in WSN
5. Challenges and Constraints
6. Selected applications of WSN

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1. Sensors in WSN
Data acquisition
and actuation
An actuator can be:
a valve controlling the flow of hot water,
a motor that opens or closes a door or window,
a pump that controls the amount of fuel injected
into an engine.
Signal conditioning
amplification (or attenuation) to change
the signal magnitude
filters to the signal to remove unwanted noise
within certain frequency ranges (e.g., highpass
filters can be used to remove 50 or 60 Hz noise
picked up by surrounding power lines)
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The components of a sensing node include:
sensing and actuation unit
processing unit
communication unit
power unit
other application-dependent units

2. Sensing node
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The term sensor node is the most general. The terms Smart Dust, mote
and COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) mote are used somewhat
interchangeably in the industry.
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Sensor nodes communicate not only with each other
but also with a base station (BS) using their wireless
radios, allowing them to disseminate their sensor data
to remote processing, visualization, analysis, and
storage systems.
3. Wireless sensor networks
A wireless sensor has not
only a sensing component,
but also on-board
processing, communication,
and storage capabilities.
With these enhancements, a
sensor node is often not only
responsible for data
collection, but also for in-
network analysis,
correlation, and fusion of its
own sensor data and data
from other sensor nodes.
When many sensors
cooperatively monitor large
physical environments, they
form a wireless sensor
network (WSN).
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Single-hop versus multi-hop communication in sensor networks.
When the transmission ranges of the radios of all sensor nodes
are large enough and the sensors can transmit their data directly
to the base station, they can form a star topology.

In mesh topology, sensor nodes must not only capture and
disseminate their own data, but also serve as relays for other
sensor nodes, that is, they must collaborate to propagate sensor
data towards the base station.
4. Communication in WSN
The well-known IEEE 802.11 family
of standards was introduced in 1997
and is the most common wireless
networking technology for mobile
systems.
It uses different frequency bands, for
example,
2.4-GHz band is used by IEEE
802.11b and IEEE 802.11g,
5 GHz for IEEE 802.11a.

Data rates provided by IEEE 802.11
are typically much higher than needed
This has led to the development of a
variety of protocols that better satisfy
the networks need for low power
consumption and low data rates.
For example,the IEEE 802.15.4
protocol has been designed for
short-range communications in low-
power sensor networks and is
supported by most academic and
commercial sensor nodes.
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Standards for Transport Protocols
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5. Challenges and Constraints
5.1. Energy
The most often met constraint is that sensor nodes operate with limited energy budgets. Typically, they
are powered through batteries, which must be either replaced or recharged (e.g., using solar power).
For some nodes, neither option is appropriate, that is, they will simply be discarded once their energy
source is depleted.
For nonrechargeable batteries, a sensor node should be able to operate until either its mission time has
passed or the battery can be replaced (monitoring glacial movements may need sensors that can operate
for several years while a sensor in a battlefield scenario may only be needed for a few hours or days).
The energy consumption of CMOS-based processors is primarily due to switching energy
and leakage energy:

E
CPU
= E
switch
+ E
leakage
= C
total
V
dd
2
+ V
dd
I
leak
t

where C
total
is the total capacitance switched by the computation,
V
dd
is the supply voltage, I
leak
is the leakage current, and t is the duration of the computation.

Switching energy still dominates the energy consumption of processors.
It is expected that in future processor designs, the leakage energy will be responsible for more than half
the energy consumption.
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5.2. Self-Management
Sensor nodes must be self-managing in that they configure themselves, operate and collaborate
with other nodes, and adapt to failures, changes in the environment, and changes in the
environmental stimuli without human intervention.
Ad Hoc Deployment
Sensors serving the assessment of battlefield or disaster areas could be thrown from airplanes over
the areas of interest, but many sensor nodes may not survive such a drop and may never be able
to begin their sensing activities.
The surviving nodes must autonomously perform a variety of setup and configuration steps, including
the establishment of communications with neighboring sensor nodes, determining their positions,
and the initiation of their sensing responsibilities.
Unattended Operation
Many sensor networks, once deployed, must operate without human intervention, that is,
configuration, adaptation, maintenance, and repair must be performed in an autonomous
fashion.
A self-managing device will monitor its surroundings, adapt to changes
in the environment, and cooperate with neighboring devices to form topologies or agree
on sensing, processing, and communication strategies.
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Attenuation limits the range of radio signals, that is, a radio frequency (RF) signal fades (i.e.,
decreases in power) while it propagates through a medium and while it passes through obstacles.
The relationship between the received power P
R
and transmitted power P
T
of an RF signal can be
expressed using the inverse-square law:



An increasing distance between a sensor node and a base station rapidly increases the required
transmission power. Therefore, it is more energy-efficient to split a large distance into several
shorter distances, leading to the challenge of supporting multi-hop communications and routing.

Due to this challenge networks employ duty cycles to preserve energy, that is, many
sensor nodes use a power conservation policy where radios are switched off when they are
not in use. As a consequence, during these down-times, the sensor node cannot receive
messages from its neighbors nor can it serve as a relay for other sensors.

Therefore, some networks rely on wakeup on demand strategies to ensure that nodes can be
woken up whenever needed. Usually this involves devices with two radios, a low-power radio
used to receive wakeup calls and a high-power radio that is activated in response to a wakeup call.

Another strategy is adaptive duty cycling, when not all nodes are allowed to sleep at the same
time. Instead, a subset of the nodes in a network remain active to form a network backbone.
2
d
P
P
T
R

5.3. Wireless Networking
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5.4. Decentralized Management
Centralized algorithms (e.g., executed at the base station) to implement
network management solutions such as topology management or routing may be ifeasible
due to yhe large scale and the energy constraints.

Instead, sensor nodes must collaborate with their neighbors to make localized decisions,
that is, without global knowledge.

As a consequence, the results of these decentralized (or distributed ) algorithms will not
be optimal, but they may be more energy-efficient than centralized solutions.
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5.5. Design Constraints
While the capabilities of traditional computing systems continue to increase rapidly, the
primary goal of wireless sensor design is to create smaller, cheaper, and more efficient
devices.

Due to this, typical sensor nodes have the processing speeds and storage capacities of
computer systems from several decades ago.

These constraints and requirements also impact the software design at various levels, for
example, operating systems must have small memory footprints and must be efficient in
their resource management tasks. However, the lack of advanced hardware features (e.g.,
support for parallel executions) facilitates the design of small and efficient operating
systems.
A sensors hardware constraints also affect the design of many protocols and algorithms
executed in a WSN.
While in-network processing can be employed to eliminate redundant information, some
sensor fusion and aggregation algorithms may require more computational power and
storage capacities than can be provided by low-cost sensor nodes.
Therefore, many software architectures and solutions (operating system, middleware,
network protocols) must be designed to operate efficiently on very resource-constrained
hardware.
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5.6. Security
The remote and unattended operation of sensor nodes increases their exposure to
malicious intrusions and attacks.

One of the most challenging security threats is a denial-of-service attack, whose goal is
to disrupt the correct operation of a sensor network. This can be achieved using a variety
of attacks, including a jamming attack , where high-powered wireless
signals are used to prevent successful sensor communications.

While there are numerous techniques and solutions for distributed systems that prevent
attacks, many of these incur significant computational, communication, and storage
requirements, which often cannot be satisfied by resource-constrained sensor nodes.

As a consequence, sensor networks require new solutions for key establishment and
distribution, node authentication, and secrecy.
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Comparison
of traditional
networks and
wireless
sensor
networks
5.7. Other Challenges
While traditional computer networks are based on established standards, many protocols and
mechanisms in wireless sensor networks are proprietary solutions, while standards-based solutions
emerge only slowly. Standards are important for interoperability and facilitate the design and deployment
of WSN applications; therefore, a key challenge in WSN design remains the standardization of promising
solutions and the harmonization of competing standards.
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Home control
applications provide
control, conservation,
convenience and
safety.
Body-worn medical
sensors (e.g. heartbeat
sensors) are also
emerging.
6. Selected applications of WSN
Home control
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Building Automation
Building automation provide
control, conservation, flexibility
and safety as follows:
management of lighting, heating,
cooling and safety
control of systems to improve
conservation
optimized HVAC management
rapid reconfiguring the lighting
system to create adaptable
workspaces
enable to network and integrate
data from multiple access control
points.
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I ndustrial Automation
Industrial automation applications provide :
process control systems reliability
reduce energy costs
identification of poorly performing equipment and inefficient operations
provide detailed data to improve preventive maintenance
help deploy monitoring networks to enhance employee and public safety.
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Medical Applications
PDA displaying real-time vital signs of multiple patients.
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Security Applications
Military sensor networks detect
information about enemy movements,
explosions etc.
law enforcement and national security
applications (figure)
sensor networks to detect chemical,
biological, radiological and explosive
attacks and material
environmental changes in forests,
oceans and so on
monitoring of vehicle traffic on
highways or in congested parts of a city
parking lot occupation sensor networks
borders monitoring with sensors ans
sattelite uplinks.
Real time monitoring and
sensor interrogation
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Typical highway traffic-sensing
installation
Highway Monitoring
Traffic in US is growing at three times the rate of
population growth.

Traffic Pulse Technology (US) is an example of a system
using stationary WNs, which collects data through sensor
network, processes and stores the data in a data center.

Temperature, pollution levels are collected in real-time.
Digital sensor network gathers lane-by-lane data on travel
speeds, lane occupancy and vehicle counts.

The data are transmitted to the data center for reformatting
(every 60 seconds).

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Civil Engineering Applications
Sensor technology is aplicable for buildings, bridges
and other structures.

The picture shows a prototype WSN developed at the
University of California, Berkeley, and deployed
at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
The bridge has a center span that sustains a maximum
transverse deflection (due to wind or earthquake) of
27.7 ft and maximum upward and downward deflections
of 5.8 ft and 10.8 ft, respectively.
The towers are 500 ft high above the roadway and 746 ft
high above the water.
The tops of the towers can have transverse deflections
of up to 12.5 in. and toward the shore longitudinal
deflections of 22 in.
Sixty-four wireless sensor nodes were deployed on this
bridge to establish a structural health monitoring
network. The nodes were distributed over the main span
and the tower, collecting ambient vibrations
synchronously, at a rate of 1 kHz, with less than 10 s
jitter and with an accuracy of 30 G.
Data is collected reliably over a 46-hop network.
The deployment scenario of nodes on the
Golden Gate Bridge:
a) the nodes are deployed on both sides of
the span.
b) a two-dimensional view of the
placement of nodes on the bridge.