INTRODUCTION TO WSN

Data gathering or harvesting is a generic research problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) –
how to collect observed (or measured) data or information from sensor nodes, and so has been
actively studied in the literature. For the data gathering process, a sink (or base station)
periodically generates query packets or collector packets to gather certain information of interest
from sensor nodes or each sensor, instead, directly informs the sink node about its observed data
or events. In addition, mobile sinks (agents), e.g., data mules, can move around the sensor field
and collect information observed at each sensor node. A random walk has been widely used as a
means of randomized routing or probabilistic packet forwarding in the data gathering process
thanks to its inherent distributed nature and other preferable properties such as simplicity of
implementation, scalability, robustness to topology changes, and avoiding critical points of
failure (or hot-spot formation) .The random walk has been also popularly used as a mobility
pattern for physical mobile agents collecting information over sensor nodes. As to the random
walk-based routing for data gathering, the existing research studies have mainly focused on the
performance of the following metrics: delay – the time for a random walk (a data or query
packet) to reach its destination (a sink node or a sensor having certain information of interest)
and cover time or its partial cover time – the time for the random walk until to visit all or partial
set of sensors. These metrics are suitable for oneshot information delivery or search/query. In
contrast, in this paper, we look at the problem of data gathering using the random-walk agent(s)
from a different, but important perspective. Note that WSNs are composed of low-cost, low-
power sensors, each of which is equipped with limited buffer/storage space for data. Also, the
random walk-based data gathering is typically for delayinsensitive applications in which the
collected data is mainly used for post-processing or other research studies later. It is thus more
important to measure how much data can be collected before it is lost due to limited buffer space,
when the sink periodically generates query packets or collector packets moving over the network
in a random walk fashion to gather measured data or its aggregated/compressed version from
sensor nodes. There is another set of research work on exploiting physical mobile agents (e.g.,
data mules) for data harvesting over the sensor field rather than relying on multi-hop
communication over sensor nodes. The reason of using the mobile agents is to save the limited
battery power of each sensor and to overcome possible network isolation. In this regard, much
research is based on traveling salesman problem, i.e., finding a Hamiltonian cycle (a NP-hard
problem), or its variants, and their solutions are, in general, only globally solvable or require
global network information such as sensor location/distance information. In this paper, we focus
on Markovian random-walk movement strategies without such global information. A crucial
reason of using the random walk is its distributed nature, as it is desirable or sometimes
imperative not to rely on global (or nearglobal) information. On the other hand, the previous
research closely related to our work in this paper, analyzed how much data can be successfully
collected by the agents in time under the mathematical framework of the standard random walks
on the grid (torus) or by directly taking into account the time interval between successive visits
of any of the random-walk agents to a sensor node. Their performance analysis was done from a
single node’s point of view, as the data arrival rate is the same over all nodes. In contrast, we
investigate the problem under a general network (graph) setting, while allowing different data
arrival rates to sensor nodes. More importantly, our focus is on the design of the distributed
optimal movement strategy for such mobile agents among a class of Markovian random-walk
movement strategies, as opposed to the performance analysis under the standard random walk
strategy.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are real-time and event driven network. These networks are
established at environment to collect information about the specified environment by a large
number of sensor nodes in a variety of scenarios including battlefields, forests, farmlands, and so
on. Sensor nodes report environmental conditions to one or more Base Station (BS) via wireless
and multi-hop communications. A BS is central data gathering and it acts as an interface between
network’s users and sensor nodes. Normally BS is a more powerful node and it is not limited in
hardware resources. Memory, energy supply, analog to digital unit (ADC), transceiver,
processing unit and sensors are the main component of a typical sensor node (See Fig. 1). Sensor
nodes may be equipped with several types of sensors to sense several environmental parameters.
Sensor nodes are tiny and inexpensive device, so they are very limited in hardware resources. Of
course, sensor nodes are constrained in transceiver capacity, so they are unable to communicate
with BS directly. Therefore, multi-hop and many to one communication are the nature of traffic
patterns in WSNs. Traditionally, WSNs are established with a stationary BS and a large number
of sensor nodes. In these networks, sensor nodes transfer their sensed data to a BS by several
intermediate nodes. Multi-hop communication between sensor nodes and a BS leads to
intermediate nodes have the more energy consumption of other nodes. Because, sensor nodes
lifetime is dependent on their power consumption, i.e., the more the power consumption, the less
the sensor node lifetime. The main components of power consumption in WSNs are power
consumed for packets send/receive in transceiver unit and the power consumed for packet
processing by processing unit respectively. Sensor nodes that are in close to BS consume the
more energy of other sensor nodes, so they have the lowest lifetime of other sensor nodes.
Several methods which are known as LoadBalancing methods have been proposed to balance
sensor nodes energy consumption. Load-balancing methods attempt to decrease the time interval
between the first node death and the last node death. Load-balancing methods in WSNs can be
considered in the mobility of BS, optimal BS positioning, network clustering, multiple base
station, and multiple mobile base station. Recently, researchers have attended to use mobile
devices in WSNs. Researchers are using the mobile devices to data gathering of sensor nodes in
WSNs. When a WSN is established with one or more mobile devices, the mobile devices can
freely and randomly move to across the network. For load-balancing enhancement the mobile
devices should move to an area of the network with more residual energy. Of course, staying the
mobile device anywhere in the network leads to increase in energy consumption of sensor nodes
that are close to the mobile device. Thus, to load-balancing enhancement, the mobile devices
always should move to different parts of the network.
be evident later, the new protocol would be best suited for Query driven model, however, it can
be slightly modified to support all the aforementioned models. The suggested modifications
would be mentioned later. The basic physical layer is actually responsible for the selection of
frequency, simple and strong modulation, detection of signal, encryption of data, transmission,
and receiving of data.

This primary layer also explains the requirement of a modulation technique to modify the power
consumption [10, 11]. Quality of Service (QoS) Quality of Service (QoS) determines the quality
of transmission as required by the application. In few applications the data has to be delivered
within a specific period of time from the momentary time it is sensed by the sensor. Review of
routing and quality of service is demonstrated by few authors [12, 13]. In the present concept, the
paper proposes a simple yet elegant solution to WSN routing problems which are useful and can
be extended to other data delivery models, through constant transmission path details in every
node and transmitting data using these paths.

Various researchers have proposed various optimal routing algorithms for information routing in
Wireless sensor networks. Since the need of finding optimality has not reached the end source,
the expectation for the routing protocol from its source is still in need. Previous attempt was
finding optimal path using hybrid scheme which combines PSO algorithms with the
computational intelligence. In that way, the initial stage of research started with FFA algorithm
which is basically fast reactive and fast adaptive in nature. The protocol is insisted by the SI and
advanced computational procedure to route the data packets. The main key idea behind the
protocol is to navigate the packets even if the node failure occurs. The node head and node
defined are clearly explained in the section Local field where the packet information and routing
information are stored. Here a new hybrid methodology is used with swarm intelligence and
basic approach in computational efficiency. The proposed methodology has high efficiency in
terms of utilizing the energy resources. Visu et al. (2012; Yong-Chang and Gang, 2008) Various
approaches are worked with in order to achieve high optimality and to route the data packets.
The main key idea is to provide node identity with packet information which was achieved in the
previous attempt in the field of Local field information.

Next hop of each sensor nodes are traced back using the FFA algorithm, once the node has been
identified the hop count will raises to next level, the graph predicts the node value of each
vertices to be in the straight line, thus the graph predicted forms a minimal rate of spanning tree
using the vertices. The hop count will be in increasing order which helps in identifying the node
and its counter. The Next hop is predicted by flooding protocol which floods the ARP req i.e.,
RTS message to all the neighbours, once the node which is nearest to the flooding node, the
particular node responds to the corresponding node with CTS message. Once the CTS message is
received the node is identified and its distance vector is initialized in the Hop counter. Thus the
counter is incremented whenever it receives CTS message from various neighbours.

IP ROUTING IP routing

The process of moving packets from one network to another network using routers. The IP
routing process is important to understand because it pertains all routers and configurations that
use IP. IP routing is used to forward packets from one node to other in the internetwork. IP
routing is also used to determine the data has to follow to reach the destination node through the
internetwork of nodes. The data is routed in the form of packets. The packets carries the data
with informations of source and the destination addresses. IP routing enables a router to build a
forwarding table or also called as a routing table to determine the next hop that the data packets
should be sent in order to reach the destination node. To be able to find all the networks in the
internetwork and a path to reach each remote internetwork, a routing protocol is used. It is also
used to ensure that all the routers in the internetwork have the same routing table. In general, a
routing protocol determines the best path for a router to send packets to the remote network
through an internetwork. Some examples of routing protocols includes Routing Information
Protocol (RIP), Routing Information Protocol version 2 (RIPv2), Enhanced Interior Gateway
Protocol (EIGRP) [3], and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) [3] . Once after the routing table is
build and all the routers has the information needed to reach to all the remote networks in the
internetwork, data packets can be sent to the remote network using a routed protocol. A routed
protocol is to an interface. Routed protocols helps in transferring packets from source to the
destination using methods of packet delivery. Some examples of routed protocols includes
Internet Protocol (IP).

ROUTING BASICS

To be able to route packets from source to the destination, a router should contain the following
informations [14]: -

 Destination Address

 Neighbor routers from which it learns about all remote networks

 Possible routes to all remote networks

 The best route to each remote network

 How to maintain and verify routing information The router needs to prepare a routing table
which is a map of the interconnectivity of the nodes in the internetwork which contains details of
which path to follow and how to reach the remote network. Such a map is built on the basis of
the informations shared among the nodes in the internetwork configured in the same routing
protocol. The administrator can also manually build the routing table. Each and every nodes in
the internetwork send and receive updates to build up the topology. For the adjacent nodes, the
node has the path to reach it i.e. the exit interface to reach the neighbor node. If a node is not
directly connected or is connected by a sequence of nodes then the node must find its way to the
destination node. Such a node can find the required path information either by Static Routing or
by Dynamic Routing. Static routing requires manually creation and updating of the routing table
by the administrator by inserting all network information into each nodes. Dynamic Routing is
better than Static Routing. In the case of the Dynamic Routing, the nodes exchange details on the
basis of the routing protocol configured in the node. This information is updated in the routing
table. If any change occurs in the internetwork the sharing process starts and the information is
exchanged until all the nodes are converged to the same routing table.

ADMINISTRATIVE DISTANCE

The administrative distance (AD) is used to rate the trustworthiness of routing information. The
value depends on the information that a router receives from its neighbor routers. The
Administrative Distance is a value which ranges from 0 to 255, where 0 means it is the most
trusted and 255 means that it doesn’t allows any traffic to pass through it. If in case, a router
receives more than one update from the same network, then the router which receives such
updates checks for the AD value. The AD value for each update will differ and the router accepts
only that AD value which is the lowest and this value is updated in the routing table of the router.

If a network is directly connected to a router, then that router will use the interface connected to
the network always. If any routing protocol is configured in the router, then also the router
chooses the connected interface as default as its AD value is less. If in the router multiple routing
protocols are configured then on receiving updates from the same network with similar routing
protocols then it chooses the least AD value. For example, if the router has a static route, a RIP
route and also an OSPF route to the same network, then the router will use the static route always
by default.

ROUTING CLASSES

There are three different routing classes:-

Distance Vector The distance vector

[8] routing protocols configured in the router finds the best path to the remote network based on
the distance from the router. The distance can be measured in the form of the hop count, which
basically indicates the number of routers the data packet has to cross in order to get to the
destination router. The vector in the Distance vector indicates the direction to the remote
network. The distance vector routing protocols are class-full routing protocols. In such classes,
full routing tables are exchanged and updates are exchanged through broadcast. e.g. - RIP, IGRP

Link State The link state

[9] routing protocols are also called as the shortest path first protocols. The link state routing
protocols consist of three routing tables, neighbor table, topology table and the routing table. The
neighbor table contains details of the directly connected routers. The topology table contains
information about the topology of the entire internetwork. The routing table consists of the
shortest path to the remote networks. The link state routing protocols are classless routing
protocols. As compared to the distance vector, in the link state only the missing routes are
exchanged. The updates are exchanged through multicast. e.g. – OSPF

Hybrid The hybrid

[8] protocols use the aspects of both the distance vector and the link state routing protocols. The
hybrid protocols are classless routing protocols. In the case of hybrid protocols, only the missing
routes are exchanged between the routers and the updates are exchanged through multicast. e.g. –
EIGRP

ROUTING METRICS

The different routing metrics [10] includes the following: -

1. Hop count The number of routers which a packet will pass before arriving at the destination
router.

2. Cost It is generally an arbitrary value that is assigned by the administrator and is based on the
bandwidth

3. Bandwidth It is the data capacity of the link.

4. Delay It measures the total time taken by a packet to move from the source router to the
destination router.

5. Load It measures the amount of activity on a network source link a router or a link.

6. Reliability It refers to the network link’s bit error rate.

7. MTU It stands for Maximum Transmission Unit. It resembles the maximum frame length in
octets which is allowed to pass to the internetwork without fragmentation.

ROUTING PROTOCOLS

RIP [ROUTING INFORMATION PROTOCOL]

RIP [4] is an open standard routing protocol. It is a distance vectored routing protocols. It is a
class-full routing protocol where updates are exchanged through broadcast. The routing table is
exchanged every 30 seconds among the routers in the inter-network. The RIP protocol uses hop
count as the metric to find the shortest path but the maximum allowable hop count is 15 by
default. The RIP protocols is used only for a small network and is ineffective for a large network.
The Administrative Distance of RIP is 120.

RIP TIMERS To manage the routing performance, RIP uses four different kinds of timers:

 Update timer It is the time interval after which a router sends it’s a copy of the routing table as
update to the neighbor routers. The update timer is 30 sec by default.

 Invalid timer It is the time interval after which a router understands that the path to a network is
invalid or becomes invalid. The invalid timer is 180 sec by default.

 Hold-down timer It specifies the amount of time for which the information about the poorer
routes are ignored. The hold-down timer is 180sec by default.

 Flush timer It is the time before the invalid route is purged from the routing table. The flush
timer is 240 sec by default.

Dis-advantages of RIP
 It uses more bandwidth as updates are exchanged every 30 seconds where each update contains
the complete routing table of the router.

 It does not uses bandwidth as the metric for calculation of the shortest path.

 RIP has a very slow convergence.

 RIP implementation can lead to routing loops in the network.

OSPF [OPEN SHORTEST PATH FIRST]

Open Shortest Path First [4] is an open standard routing protocol. It is the successor of RIP
routing protocol. It is a classless routing protocol. It works with link state advertisement and uses
Dijkstra algorithm to find the shortest path. Here updates are exchanged through multicast i.e.
224.0.0.5. The administrative distance is 110 and the metric used by OSPF is the cost which is
based on the bandwidth of the link. The cost is found by dividing the bandwidth in bps to 10^8.

FEATURES: -

 Includes division into areas and autonomous systems.

 It minimizes the traffic by reducing update.

 It is scalable.

 It supports Variable Length Subnet Mask and Classless InterDomain Routing.

 Has maximum hop count of 255.

 It can be configured on different vendor routers.

 Faster convergence.

 Hello packets are sent every 10sec.

 Hierarchical design with multiple areas.

 RIP is only applicable to small network and is inefficient for larger networks.

INTRODUCTION TO WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS & APPLICATIONS

Smart environments represent the next evolutionary development step in building,

utilities, industrial, home, shipboard, and transportation systems automation. Like any sentient
organism, the smart environment relies first and foremost on sensory data from the real world.
Sensory data comes from multiple sensors of different modalities in distributed locations. The
smart environment needs information about its surroundings as well as about its internal
workings; this is captured in biological systems by the distinction between exteroceptors and
proprioceptors.
The challenges in the hierarchy of: detecting the relevant quantities, monitoring and collecting
the data, assessing and evaluating the information, formulating meaningful user displays, and
performing decision-making and alarm functions are enormous. The information needed by
smart environments is provided by Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks, which are responsible
for sensing as well as for the first stages of the processing hierarchy. The importance of sensor
networks is highlighted by the number of recent funding initiatives, including the DARPA
SENSIT program, military programs, and NSF Program Announcements

The figure shows the complexity of wireless sensor networks, which generally consist of a data
acquisition network and a data distribution network, monitored and controlled by a management
center. The plethora of available technologies makes even the selection of components difficult,
let alone the design of a consistent, reliable, robust overall system.
 The study of wireless sensor networks is challenging in that it requires an enormous breadth of
knowledge from an enormous variety of disciplines. In this chapter we outline communication
networks, wireless sensor networks and smart sensors, physical transduction principles,
commercially available wireless sensor systems, self-organization, signal processing and
decision-making, and finally some concepts for home automation.

WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Sensor networks are the key to gathering the information needed by smart environments,
whether in buildings, utilities, industrial, home, shipboard, transportation systems automation, or
elsewhere. Recent terrorist and guerilla warfare countermeasures require distributed networks of
sensors that can be deployed using, e.g. aircraft, and have self-organizing capabilities. In such
applications, running wires or cabling is usually impractical. A sensor network is required that is
fast and easy to install and maintain.
Wireless sensor networks satisfy these requirements. Desirable functions for sensor nodes
include: ease of installation, self-identification, self-diagnosis, reliability, time awareness for
coordination with other nodes, some software functions and DSP, and standard control protocols
and network interfaces [IEEE 1451 Expo, 2001].

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors to

monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure, etc. and to
cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location. The more modern networks
are bi-directional, also enabling control of sensor activity. The development of wireless sensor
networks was motivated by military applications such as battlefield surveillance; today such
networks are used in many industrial and consumer applications, such as industrial process
monitoring and control, machine health monitoring, and so on.
Fig 1. A typical Wireless Sensor Network Example

Since a wireless sensor network is a distributed real-time system a natural question is

how many solutions from distributed and real-time systems can be used in these new systems?
Unfortunately, very little prior1 work can be applied and new solutions are necessary in all areas
of the system. The main reason is that the set of assumptions underlying previous work has
changed dramatically. Most past distributed systems research has assumed that the systems are
wired, have unlimited power, are not real-time, have user interfaces such as screens and mice,
have a fixed set of resources, treat each node in the system as very important and are location
independent. In contrast, for wireless sensor networks, the systems are wireless, have scarce
power, are real-time, utilize sensors and actuators as interfaces, have dynamically changing sets
of resources, aggregate behavior is important and location is critical. Many wireless sensor
networks also utilize minimal capacity devices which places a further strain on the ability to use
past solutions.

Characteristics

The main characteristics of a WSN include

 Power consumption constrains for nodes using batteries or energy harvesting

  Ability to cope with node failures

 Mobility of nodes

 Communication failures

 Heterogeneity of nodes

 Scalability to large scale of deployment

 Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions

 Ease of use

 Power consumption

The WSN is built of "nodes" – from a few to several hundreds or even thousands, where
each node is connected to one (or sometimes several) sensors. Each such sensor network node
has typically several parts: a radio transceiver with an internal antenna or connection to an
external antenna, a microcontroller, an electronic circuit for interfacing with the sensors and an
energy source, usually a battery or an embedded form of energy harvesting. A sensor node might
vary in size from that of a shoebox down to the size of a grain of dust, although functioning
"motes" of genuine microscopic dimensions have yet to be created. The cost of sensor nodes is
similarly variable, ranging from a few to hundreds of dollars, depending on the complexity of the
individual sensor nodes. Size and cost constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding
constraints on resources such as energy, memory, computational speed and communications
bandwidth. The topology of the WSNs can vary from a simple star network to an advanced
multi-hop wireless mesh network. The propagation technique between the hops of the network
can be routing or flooding.

Self-Organization and Localization

Ad hoc networks of nodes may be deployed using, e.g. aircraft or ships. Self organization
of ad hoc networks includes both communications self-organization and positioning self-
organization. In the former, the nodes must wake up, detect each other, and form a
communication network. Technologies for this are by now standard, by and large developed
within the mobile phone industry. Distributed surveillance sensor networks require information
about the relative positions of the nodes for distributed signal processing, as well as absolute
positioning information for reporting data related to detected targets.

Energy Considerations:

A wireless sensor network consists of sensor nodes deployed over a geographical area for
monitoring physical phenomena like temperature, humidity, vibrations, seismic events, and so
on. Typically, a sensor node is a tiny device that includes three basic components: a sensing
subsystem for data acquisition from the physical surrounding environment, a processing
subsystem for local data processing and storage, and a wireless communication subsystem for
data transmission. In addition, a power source supplies the energy needed by the device to
perform the programmed task. This power source often consists of a battery with a limited
energy budget. In addition, it could be impossible or inconvenient to recharge the battery,
because nodes may be deployed in a hostile or unpractical environment. On the other hand, the
sensor network should have a lifetime long enough to fulfill the application requirements. In
many cases a lifetime in the order of several months, or even years, may be required. Therefore,
the crucial question is: “how to prolong the network lifetime to such a long time?” In some cases
it is possible to scavenge energy from the external environment [59] (e.g., by using solar cells as
power source). However, external power supply sources often exhibit a non-continuous behavior
so that an energy buffer (a battery) is needed as well. In any case, energy is a very critical
resource and must be used very sparingly. Therefore, energy conservation is a key issue in the
design of systems based on wireless sensor networks.

Experimental measurements have shown that generally data transmission is very

expensive in terms of energy consumption, while data processing consumes significantly less.
The energy cost of transmitting a single bit of information is approximately the same as that
needed for processing a thousand operations in a typical sensor node. The energy consumption of
the sensing subsystem depends on the specific sensor type. In many cases it is negligible with
respect to the energy consumed by the processing and, above all, the communication subsystems.
In other cases, the energy expenditure for data sensing may be comparable to, or even greater
than, the energy needed for data transmission. In general, energy-saving techniques focus on two
subsystems: the networking subsystem (i.e., energy management is taken into account in the
operations of each single node, as well as in the design of networking protocols), and the sensing
subsystem (i.e., techniques are used to reduce the amount or frequency of energy-expensive
samples). The lifetime of a sensor network can be extended by jointly applying different
techniques. For example, energy efficient protocols are aimed at minimizing the energy
consumption during network activities. However, a large amount of energy is consumed by node
components (CPU, radio, etc.) even if they are idle. Power management schemes are thus used
for switching off node components that are not temporarily needed.

Applications of Wireless Sensor Networks:

Area monitoring

Area monitoring is a common application of WSNs. In area monitoring, the WSN is

deployed over a region where some phenomenon is to be monitored. A military example is the
use of sensors to detect enemy intrusion; a civilian example is the geo-fencing of gas or oil
pipelines.

When the sensors detect the event being monitored (heat, pressure), the event is reported
to one of the base stations, which then takes appropriate action (e.g., send a message on the
internet or to a satellite). Similarly, wireless sensor networks can use a range of sensors to detect
the presence of vehicles ranging from motorcycles to train cars.

Air Quality Monitoring

To protect humans and the environment from damage by air pollution, it is of the utmost
importance to measure the levels of pollutants in the air. Real time monitoring of dangerous
gases is particularly interesting in hazardous areas, as the conditions can change dramatically
very quickly, with serious consequences.
Environmental Magnitudes: Temperature, Humidity, Light

Gas & Particle Concentration: O2, CO, CO2, SO2, H2S, NO, NO2, NH3, CH4, PM-10,
TVOC

Ambient Monitoring: Rainfall, Wind speed, Wind direction, UV levels, Atmospheric pressure

 Interior Monitoring

The measurement of gas levels at hazardous environments requires the use of robust and
trustworthy equipment that meets industrial regulations.

 Exterior Monitoring

Outdoor monitoring of air quality requires the use not only of accurate sensors, but also rain &
wind resistant housing, as well as the use of energy harvesting techniques that ensure extended
autonomy to equipment which will most probably have difficult access.

Environmental/Earth monitoring

The term Environmental Sensor Networks, has evolved to cover many applications of
WSNs to earth science research. This includes sensing volcanoes, oceans, glaciers forests, etc.
Some of the major areas are listed below.

Forest fire detection

A network of Sensor Nodes can be installed in a forest to detect when a fire has started.
The nodes can be equipped with sensors to measure temperature, humidity and gases which are
produced by fire in the trees or vegetation. The early detection is crucial for a successful action
of the firefighters; thanks to Wireless Sensor Networks, the fire brigade will be able to know
when a fire is started and how it is spreading.

Air pollution monitoring

Wireless sensor networks have been deployed in several cities (Stockholm, London or
Brisbane) to monitor the concentration of dangerous gases for citizens. These can take advantage
of the ad-hoc wireless links rather than wired installations, which also make them more mobile
for testing readings in different areas. There are various architectures that can be used for such
applications as well as different kinds of data analysis and data mining that can be conducted.

Landslide detection

A landslide detection system makes use of a wireless sensor network to detect the slight
movements of soil and changes in various parameters that may occur before or during a
landslide. And through the data gathered it may be possible to know the occurrence of landslides
long before it actually happens.

Industrial monitoring

Machine health monitoring

Wireless sensor networks have been developed for machinery condition-based

maintenance (CBM) as they offer significant cost savings and enable new functionalities. In
wired systems, the installation of enough sensors is often limited by the cost of wiring.
Previously inaccessible locations, rotating machinery, hazardous or restricted areas, and mobile
assets can now be reached with wireless sensors.

Data Logging

Wireless sensor networks are also used for the collection of data for monitoring of
environmental information; this can be as simple as the monitoring of the temperature in a fridge
to the level of water in overflow tanks in nuclear power plants. The statistical information can
then be used to show how system has been working. The advantage of WSNs over conventional
loggers is the "live" data feed that is possible.

Industrial sense and control applications

In recent research a vast number of wireless sensor network communication protocols

have been developed. While previous research was primarily focused on power awareness, more
recent research have begun to consider a wider range of aspects, such as wireless link reliability,
real-time capabilities, or quality-of-service. These new aspects are considered as an enabler for
future applications in industrial and related wireless sense and control applications, and partially
replacing or enhancing conventional wire-based networks by WSN techniques.
Water/wastewater monitoring

There are many opportunities for using wireless sensor networks within the
water/wastewater industries. Facilities not wired for power or data transmission can be
monitored using industrial wireless I/O devices and sensors powered using solar panels or
battery packs and also used in pollution control board.

Agriculture

Using wireless sensor networks within the agricultural industry is increasingly common;
using a wireless network frees the farmer from the maintenance of wiring in a difficult
environment. Gravity feed water systems can be monitored using pressure transmitters to
monitor water tank levels, pumps can be controlled using wireless I/O devices and water use can
be measured and wirelessly transmitted back to a central control center for billing. Irrigation
automation enables more efficient water use and reduces waste.

Greenhouse monitoring

Wireless sensor networks are also used to control the temperature and humidity levels
inside commercial greenhouses. When the temperature and humidity drops below specific levels,
the greenhouse manager must be notified via e-mail or cell phone text message, or host systems
can trigger misting systems, open vents, turn on fans, or control a wide variety of system
responses.