Wireless sensor networks: a vision for new networking paradigm

Citation

Gavrilovska, L. (2009), "Wireless sensor networks: a vision for new networking paradigm", Sensor Review, Vol. 29 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2009.08729caa.002

Wireless sensor networks: a vision for new networking paradigm

Article Type: Viewpoint From: Sensor Review, Volume 29, Issue 3

Sensor networks are announced as one of the top ten technologies that will create giant impact to the future life styles and various industrial segments. A sensor network consists of multiple detection stations called sensor nodes which are specialized transducers with a communication infrastructure intended to monitor and record conditions at diverse locations. They are usually small, lightweight and portable. Sensor nodes can be hard-wired or wireless and they derive the power from the electric utility or from a battery. Commonly monitored parameters comprise temperature, humidity, pressure, wind direction and speed, illumination intensity, vibration intensity, velocity, sound intensity, power-line voltage, humidity, chemical concentrations, pollutant levels and vital body functions.

Sensor networks are gaining popularity among the academia and industry due to the enormous number of possible applications leading towards the enrichment and enhancement of human lives. A variety of sensors can enable the establishment of systems that are safer and more productive, ranging from automatic control systems, intelligent buildings and early warning systems up to sensors’ implementation in variety of environmental monitoring solutions, emergency and disaster detection, military surveillance, habitat and structural monitoring, health monitoring and biomedical application, precision agriculture, traffic management and monitoring, etc.

The diversity in applications is achieved with seamless and ubiquitous communication of the sensor technology with the real physical world. Sensor networks offer features which drive them beyond the traditional paradigm of standard computers and embedded systems, characterized with power awareness, limited processing power, communication and networking constraints. The expansion of the networking technology, especially in the wireless domain, and the economic factors are enabling new implementations and services for wireless solutions such as wireless sensor networks. The novelty in the sensor networking concepts and the entertainment application in general are additional driving factors.

Wireless sensor networking paradigm must cope with the enlargement in the number of deployed sensors and possible applications and with the requirement for smaller size and more functionalities in a sensor design. Because of the limited access and reduced human interventions and administration, the self-configuration and self-adaptation property must be achieved. Considering the extreme network dynamic, systems must have passive vigilance, efficient triggering and rapid transformation to high levels of concurrency and effectiveness.

Wireless sensor networks imply many research challenges due to hardware and software constraints. An efficient layer design from physical to application layers is accompanied with cross-layering approaches, energy scavenging, energy harvesting and aspects of cooperative communication. These topics are complemented whit mobility, geographic routing and attribute addressing, security, time synchronization, localization and efficient data gathering. A lot of research work has been done on protocols (multihop, energy-efficient and fault tolerant), architectures, dedicated operating and database systems, programming languages and standardization (802.15.4 and ZigBee).

Sensors will become ubiquitous technology that will shape and influence almost every domain of human live and activities from intra-body to space domains. A variety of sensor networks will sense, measure and record different phenomena informing and warning the people. Data acquired through sensors will be processed and shared with other wireless devices reviewing the system hardware and software design.

In a future personalized world wireless sensor networks will enrich the concept of personal networking participating in creation of new personal paradigms. Embedded sensors might generate aggregate traffic achieving high data rates and pushing towards new transmission limits in wireless domain. New networking concepts, miniature low power solutions, autonomous functionalities accompanied with enormous number of new applications promote wireless sensor networks into one of the roadmaps for human progress.

Liljana GavrilovskaFaculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies (FEEIT), University Ss Cyril and Methodius in Skopje, Skopje, Macedonia