Overview of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks can be defined as a self-configured and infrastructure-less wireless network to monitor environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, pressure, motion etc.

A base station (sink) acts like an interface between users and the network. one can retrieve required information from the network by injecting queries and gathering results from sink.
Typically a wireless sensor network contains thousands of sensor nodes. The sensor nodes can communicate among themselves using radio signals.

A wireless sensor node is equipped with sensing and computing devices, radio transceivers and power components. The individual nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) have limited processing speed, storage capacity, and communication bandwidth.

Wireless sensor devices can be equipped with actuators to “act” upon certain conditions. These networks are sometimes more specifically referred as Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks 

                                            A typical Wireless Sensor Network


 Applications of wireless sensor network:

Military applications: military command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, battlefield surveillance, and targeting systems. 
Area monitoring: The sensors detect the event being monitored (heat, pressure etc.), the event is reported to one of the base stations, which then takes appropriate action. 
Transportation: Real-time traffic information is being collected by WSNs to alert drivers of congestion and traffic problems. 
Health applications: tracking & monitoring doctors or patients inside a hospital, drug administration etc. 
Environmental sensing: This includes sensing volcanoes, oceans, glaciers, forests etc.
 Some other major areas are listed below: 
1: Air pollution monitoring 
2: Forest fires detection
3: Greenhouse monitoring 
4: Landslide detection 

Structural monitoring: 
Wireless sensors can be utilized to monitor the movement within buildings and infrastructure such as bridges, flyovers, tunnels etc. 
 Industrial monitoring: Wireless sensor networks have been developed for machinery condition-based maintenance (CBM) 
Agricultural sector: Irrigation automation enables more efficient water use and reduces waste.


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