Proceeding of the IEEE
International Conference on Automation and Logistics
Zhengzhou, China, August 2012
A Review of Wireless Sensor Networks and Its
Applications
Shiwei Zhang Haitao Zhang
Electronic & Information Engineering College Electronic & Information Engineering College
Henan University of Science and Technology Henan University of Science and Technology
Luoyang,Henan Province,China Luoyang,Henan Province,China
[email protected] [email protected] Abstract - In recent ten years, wireless sensor network not reach, this requires the sensor node has the
technology has a rapid development. After a brief introduction self-organization ability to configure and manage
of the wireless sensor network, some main research results of automatically. When a node cannot directly communicate
energy conservation and node deployment is provided. Then with the gateway, it requires other nodes to transmit data, so
the applications of WSN in the medical health, environment
the network data transmission is a multi-hop routing. In
and agriculture, intelligent home furnishing and building,
military, space and marine exploration are outlined. In some special applications, wireless sensor network is
addition, we analyze the advantage of WSN in these areas. mobile, sensor nodes may stop work because of the energy
Finally, we summarize the main factors that affect the consumed or other failure, these factors will make the
applications of wireless sensor network. network topology changes. There are a large number of
sensor nodes in wireless sensor network and often need to
arranged in a specific monitoring area. The hardware
Index Terms - Wireless sensor network, Energy
resources of sensor node are limited because of the size and
conservation, Nodedeploymeng, Application. cost constraints. So its computing power, storage capacity is
I. INTRODUCTION relatively weak. Mobile communication network or Ad hoc
network mainly considers how to improve the network
Wireless sensor network is a large number of static or transmission capacity under current conditions, that is to
mobile sensors nodes which form the wireless network provide users with a bandwidth sufficient, safe and reliable
using self-organization and multi-hop method, its purpose is transmission channel. However, wireless sensor network is
to collaborate detection, processing and transmitting the used to monitor the various measured data. In the network
object monitoring information in areas where the network design process, we mainly consider how to deal with
coverages. The sensor node, sink node, the user node perception data efficiently and transmit the obtained data to
constitute the three elements of sensor networks. Sensor the user node. Therefore, one characteristic of the wireless
node is the foundation of the whole network, they are sensor network is data-centric. As wireless sensor networks
responsible for the perception of data, processing data, store uses wireless transmission, so the monitoring data is easy to
data and transmit data. The sensor notes are mutual be intercepted, or even confuse users after tampering. After
collaboration, note is not directly upload the original data, a large number of sensor nodes are captured, the enemy
but to use their own processing capacity for proper may use them to destroy the existing network. Therefore, in
operation and integration, only forward the data that the the design of wireless sensor networks, security problem is
lower-level note needs. The sensor node can sense much the focus of the study.
environmental information, including temperature and The key technologies of wireless sensor networks are
humidity, pressure, light condition, vehicle movement, network protocol, time-synchronization, localization, data
mechanical pressure strength, the speed of the airflow aggregation, power management and security
direction and other characteristics. It is these characteristics, administration.
sensor network in many aspects, such as medical health, In the wireless sensor network protocol study, medium
environment and agriculture, intelligent home furnishing access control protocol and routing protocol is the key
and building, military, space and marine exploration have point. Medium access control protocol is a set of rules and
been widely applied and show a valuable application processes to effectively, orderly and equitably use shared
prospect. media. Routing protocol is responsible for the data packets
The main features of wireless sensor networks are from source node forwarding to destination node through
self-organization, multi-hop route, dynamic network the network, mainly to complete the search for optimal path
topology, node resources limited, data-centric and security and trasmit the data according to the optimal path. Wireless
problem. sensor network nodes are generally battery-powered; a
The nodes of the wireless sensor network have the deployment of lifetime use, the battery charging and
automatic networking function and the nodes can replacement is difficult. Therefore, in the design of wireless
communicate with each other. In the application of wireless sensor networks, we should work for the efficient use of
sensor network, typically the sensor nodes are placed energy node in the completion of the requirements under the
somewhere with no base network facility. Such as a vast premise, as far as possible to extend the life of the entire
area of virgin forest, or the danger area where people can network. In wireless sensor networks, security
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administration is mainly reflected in two aspects: III. NODE DEPLOYMENT
communication and information security. Communication
Each sensor senses the environment and sends sensed
security mainly considers the security node, passive defense
data to a distant basestation, through which an end-user can
intrusion attack and active against invasion. And the
access the information. Fig. 2 shows a typical wireless
information security mainly considers data confidentiality,
sensor network consisting of a number of wirelessly
data integrity and effectiveness.
connected sensors. Now researches on the deployment of
II. ENERGY CONSERVATION wireless sensor nodes, mainly concentrated in the
deterministic and random deployment in regional coverage,
The core problem in wireless sensor networks is how
the random deployment of target coverage. Random
to save energy. There are a lot of ways to save energy and
deployment, namely randomly throw nodes firstly, and then
many scholars have carried out related research. Now we
using a variety of optimization algorithm for deployment
summarize them as follows: change the routing and
optimization. Such as Virtual force algorithm [4], virtual
optimum routing. As shown in Fig 1, we can see the
force oriented particles algorithm [5], simulated annealing
classification of approaches of energy saving in WSN. For
algorithm, and particle swarm optimization algorithm [6]
example, V Katiyar [1] proposed an energy efficiency
and simulated annealing genetic algorithm [7].
routing LEACH protocol. The method considers the
The key point of the research on nodes deployed
residual energy of node, so we can use cluster head
algorithm is to increase the coverage area, and to enhance
selection strategy to improve the network utilization rate of
network connectivity, prolong the network lifetime and
energy, and prolong the lifetime of the network. Another
improve the accuracy of the data transmission. Secondly,
method is to optimize the MAC layer protocol. Such as: Liu
the aim of nodes deployed algorithm is to strengthen the
J W [2] improved the S-MAC protocol, the node can switch
tolerance of the node and make load balance. Obviously, it
between monitoring and sleep, it also can send control and
has the certain difficulty if just using the node random
data information in optimal transmit power in the
deployment to completely meet those design goals. At the
monitoring period, to reduce the interference range, and
same time, to the highest limit reduced deployment cost
save more energy. We also can use high energy battery.
problems is still need to be solved, although it can meet the
However, the ideal situation is to make the sensor nodes
needs of major and minor deployment objectives of
have the function of self-renewable energy. Morais [3]
controlling deployment in theory. Therefore, the target
proposed to make use of solar energy and wind power to
optimization of the sensor nodes deployment mainly is
supply power for routing nodes in WSN. Finally, we can
divided into following classes: coverage area, net
optimize the network topology. Topology control can
connectivity and network lifetime.
generate network topology automatically and improve the
routing protocol and MAC protocol efficiency; it lays the IV. APPLICATIONS
foundation for data fusion, time synchronization and target
WSN applications can be classified into two
location, it is benefit to save the energy of sensor nodes,
categories: monitoring and tracking. Monitoring
thus prolonging the lifetime of the network.
applications include indoor or outdoor environmental
monitoring, health and wellness monitoring, power
monitoring, inventory location monitoring, factory and
process automation, and seismic and structural monitoring.
Tracking applications include tracking objects, animals,
humans, and vehicles. While there are many different
applications, below we describe a few example applications
that have been deployed and tested in the real environment.
Wireless sensor networks has been widely applied in
the field of medical health, Including patient monitoring,
disease diagnosis, hospital drug management, remote
Fig. 1 Classification of approaches of energy saving in WSN. monitoring of human physiological data, tracking and
monitoring of hospital doctors and the patient's activities.
The physiological data of sensor network collected can be
stored for a long used in medical research. University of
California is proposed a human health monitoring platform
CusMed [8] which is based on wireless sensor network.
Using wearable sensor node, sensor types include pressure,
skin reactions, telescopic, a piezoelectric film sensor, and
temperature sensor etc. Node using the University of
California, Berkeley developed; of the company Crossbow
produced the dot-mote node, through the pocket PC
machine you can conveniently view the current situation of
human body.
In the medical field, because of the small size of the
wireless sensor network nodes and wireless communication
Fig. 2 A typical wireless sensor network. technology, and they are portability, real-time monitoring,
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low power consumption, location compared with fixed Wireless sensor network has a unique advantage in the
medical equipment. So they can provide new solutions and construction of fire rescue. First, Wireless sensor networks
techniques for telemonitoring, first aid, etiological can determine the location of the trapped, then to establish a
diagnosis, and medical equipment tracing and medication reasonable evacuation model and plan the best escape route,
management [9]. It is important for innovating medical to effectively guide the personnel escape. Second, rescue
model, raising the level of treatment and diagnosis, solving workers carry individual sensing device or PDA devices can
the problems of the aging of population caused by social join the network as a mobile node, timely access to the
problems [9-11]. Medical parameters monitoring relates to comprehensive information of the scene, effectively
the lives of patients, so the reliability is very important. guarantee their own safety and the effective command of
Reliability of wireless sensor networks involves the control center.
transmission of real-time data, the accuracy of the data Wireless sensor network has to be deployed quickly,
communication, information privacy and security; it is the self-organization, strong concealment and high fault
key technology of the whole system. tolerance characteristics, so the wireless sensor network has
Wireless sensor network in agricultural and become an essential part of the military C4ISRT
environmental applications include: the monitoring of (Command, Control, Communication, Computing,
environmental conditions affect crops, precision agriculture Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance and Targeting)
monitoring, to track the movement of birds, insects and system. So the military departments pay much attention to it
other small animals, the detection of oceans, soil, and and many countries have invested a lot of manpower and
atmospheric composition, forest fire monitoring, pollution financial resources for research. “Smart dust” is a very
monitoring, rainfall monitoring, river water level representative of the military application research project.
monitoring, flood monitoring and so on. Such as in "Smart dust" is a network of computing power, low cost,
large-scale hatcheries or irrigation district, we can use low power, and ultra-miniature sensor. The network can
wireless network control system for agricultural research monitor the surrounding environment temperature,
and collecting relevant parameters, we also can detect soil brightness, and vibration. It even can detect the existence of
moisture and air humidity in order to control irrigation; we radiation or toxic chemicals of the surrounding.
can measure in field research and ecological climate studies To face the unknown environment, the sensor may
through the parameters of selecting place. And we can use it need to overcome the temperature, climate, and even the
to study the ecological forest and desert climate, to detect harsh environment of the pressures. In addition, the sensor
the regional air pollution or the field observation; itself needs to be small, to avoid being detected and
Deployment of wireless sensor network system monitoring destroyed by the enemy. In this case, the miniaturization of
mudslides in the mountainous region to predict the the sensor and the ability to adapt to the harsh environment
occurrence of debris flow before the disaster. is the main demand. Also, some sensors may fail, in this
There are three significant advantages to use wireless case, the sensor network as a whole to be able to complete
sensor networks in agricultural and environmental the task need to be considered.
monitoring [12]: Firstly, WSN’s self-organization provides Explore the outer planet of mankind is our dream. We
a low-cost and rapid deployment of network. Secondly, the can dispenser sensor nodes to the surface of the planet in a
collected data can be transmitted through the intermediate large area, long time, close monitoring and exploration with
node, with no increase in power consumption and cost, and the help of spacecraft, and it is a kind of economic and
the system performance is improved by one order of reliable scheme. Sensor webs developed by NASA’s JPL
magnitude. Thirdly, the robustness and the survivability of laboratory are ready for future Mars exploration which can
network meet the needs of specific applications. help select the landing ground. Now the project is testing in
The design goal of intelligent home furnishing is to the Florida Space Center of environmental monitoring
link all sorts of household in the house, so that they can project. The 21st century is the century of human in-depth
automatically run and work together to provide as much development and utilization of marine resources. Marine
convenience and comfort for the occupants. We can embed physics research, data collection, traffic navigation,
the sensor nodes in the home appliances and furniture; they resources exploration, pollution monitoring, disaster
can provide us with a more comfortable and more prevention, as well as on underwater military target
user-friendly smart home environment through the wireless monitoring, positioning, tracking and classification which
sensor network. We can use the remote monitoring system need of scheduling intelligent, autonomous, distributed,
to complete remote control of appliances. The use of all-weather information collection, transmission, processing
wireless sensor network can make buildings, bridges and and fusion technology. According to these requirements,
other structures feel and realize their condition, the based on multi sensor underwater distributed information
intelligent building can automatic tell their status acquisition, network communication, information
information to the management through the wireless sensor processing technology has received national attention, and
network, which allows the management to repair the with the rapid development of communication technology,
buildings by priority. The United States University of DSP technology, and MESMS sensor technology in recent
Southern California's Wisden [13] is a wireless sensor years. It has become an important issue of our country
network based on the data acquisition system which is national economy and military.
mainly for structural health monitoring. Wisden use MicaZ Wireless sensor network has the particular advantage
and Mica2 sensor node which can collect data 1 times per in ocean monitoring. First, it is a wireless network without
second, then they can send data to base station through base stations, cable infrastructure, so the network
multi-hop routing. deployment is very convenient [14]. The sensor nodes are
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VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the wireless sensor network was
introduced briefly and outlined the main application of
wireless sensor network. Then a brief analysis of the typical
examples of applications in various fields and advantages,
and also analysis the main factors to affect the applications
of wireless sensor networks.
In summary, the wireless sensor network is a broad
development prospect of one of the high technology. It
combines sensor technology, embedded computing
technology, modern network and wireless communication
technology, distributed information processing technology,
provides us with a new way to obtain information and
process information. We believe that, in the near future,
WSN will be everywhere.
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