Contemporary Developments in Wireless Sensor Networks
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
I.J.Modern Education and Computer Science, 2012, 3, 1-13 Published Online April 2012 in MECS (http://www.mecs-press.org/) DOI: 10.5815/ijmecs.2012.03.01 Contemporary Developments in Wireless Sensor Networks Sangeeta Mittal Department of Computer Science & Information Technology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India Email: [email protected] Alok Aggarwal Department of Computer Science & Information Technology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India Email: [email protected] S.L. Maskara G2W - Soura Niloy. 1 - Kailash Ghosh Road.Kolkata - 700 008. ( WB ). India Email: [email protected] Abstract—Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) since their made a tremendous progress. An analysis of inception, a decade ago, have grown well in research and contemporary developments in these sub areas of WSN is implementation. In this work the developments in WSNs are the subject matter of this paper and we elaborate on these reported in three sub areas of wireless sensor networks that aspects. The applications of WSN encompass many areas is, wireless sensor node (hardware and software), like healthcare, environmental monitoring, smart Communication & Networking issues in WSNs and application areas. WSNs are characterized by huge data dwellings and civil & battle field security. Still challenges hence research work in aggregation & mining is also such as design of new sensor devices to sense & calibrate discussed. Contemporary issues of integration of WSNs with phenomenon of new interests, integration of WSNs with other prevalent networks, sensor enabled smartness and co existing networks and meaningful interpretation of role of artificial intelligence methods is elaborated. Insight sensor data has to be addressed [4][5]. into future directions & research avenues in all the above In this paper a brief description of WSN evolution, areas is provided. the contemporary developments in various aspects of WSN have been discussed to get an up-to-date Index Terms—Wireless Sensor Networks, Node, Data perspective in the field. For convenience the paper has Handling, Smart Sensor Networks been discussed in 4 major categories namely related to sensing node, wireless transmission & networking issues, data handling & knowledge extraction and emerging I. INTRODUCTION applications. The paper is organized as follows. The next section elaborates advances in WSN nodes – hardware & Sensors play very important role in human lives. software and battery technology. Several issues like size, People want to know about their nearby as well as far computational power and energy are discussed. In third away surroundings/environments to take care of any section the communication and networking issues like undesirable /dangerous situations and for planning their ensure coverage and deployment are addressed. Inter- activities. Man made sensors can be deployed in the connection of WSNs with other networks is also places which are required to be explored. A variety of emphasized in this section. Data centricity is one of the mechanical, thermal, biological, chemical, optical, and features that distinguish WSNs from other wireless magnetic sensors are available for sensing different types networks. The fourth section reviews emerging topics of information. The information so sensed has to be related to efficient transmission and information converted into digital form and transmitted to appropriate extraction from WSN data. Fifth section is about a very location preferably by wireless means nowadays. In view recent concept of smartness enabled by sensors and use of of the large number of sensors, locations and users it artificial intelligence in WSNs and in last section becomes necessary to connect them to form a Wireless emerging applications are enumerated. The paper is then Sensor Network (WSN) [1]. A considerable amount of concluded with a discussion on current open challenges development has been made in WSNs over the last two to be met. decades. The advances in wireless sensor networking technologies have been rather very fast, it is therefore felt that the developments in various aspects of the WSN are II. DEVELOPMENTS IN WIRELESS SENSOR NODE compiled at one place to get an overall perspective. Three components namely the sensing and processing device The building block of a WSN is the Sensor Node. called “sensor node”, the wireless communication links & Wireless Sensor Nodes are fundamental to large scale networks and data transmission & processing form the monitoring of detailed information gathering not possible research areas in this field [2][3]. Each one of them has with any other technique. Sensors are not new to industry Copyright © 2012 MECS I.J. Modern Education and Computer Science, 2012, 3, 1-13 2 Contemporary Developments in Wireless Sensor Networks but have grown in capability with time; the recent CPU, modest RAM and some secondary storage [6]. sensors are self sufficient devices with components like Such Wireless Sensors’ Network has few tens to processor & memory besides mere sensing and thousands of sensor nodes working together to monitor a communication. Arrangement of such components in a region to obtain data about the environment. Several typical sensor node is shown in figure 1. A typical Sensor families of sensors like MicaZ, smartdust and SunSPOTs node now is characterized by its communication & are some commercially popular sensing nodes of the sensing range, type of antenna, components, memory, second generation. storage, power, computational capability, communication TABLE I. technology, size, programming interface, cost and GENERATIONS OF WIRELESS SENSOR NODES lifetime. The journey of these wireless sensor nodes is st nd rd presented here in terms of past, state-of the-art and Characteristics 1 2 3 advancements in hardware and software related to nodes. of node/network Generation Generation Generation Sensing and Previous & Previous & Main Activity of communicat Numeric Logical sensor node ion Processing Processing Topology Star Mesh Hybrid Logical - Processing Limited to Nil Abstractions capabilities numeric , Inference Constrained In built Energy Source on board Same Power battery harvesters Hardware & Reconfigurable No Software Software 433 MHz Figure 1: Components of a typical sensor node and 915 2.4 GHz Frequency Band Infra Red In this section we present the developments in MHz of (ISM) ISM sensor node in terms of the advancements in hardware and the amount & type of software embedded into it. The third generation nodes are futuristic with following capabilities. Micro Power harvesting [7][8]- is A. Node Hardware: scavenging alternative power sources to harvest RF The journey of sensor node hardware in terms of its power. Proximate sources of energy like Solar, capabilities and components since their advent till today Temperature Gradients, Human Power, Wind Flow, and is summarized as various generations in table 1. Much Vibrations can be harnessed [9]. Low power circuit before WSN concept, independent non-networked designing will further make nodes self sustainable. sensors used in automated gates, remote controls and Reconfigurable Hardware [10] – Use of Field automobiles etc were considered the first generation of Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) for hardware design sensor hardware. Such sensors were only capable of reconfiguration and components library to get a new transmitting analog signals to a controller &actuator unit. sensor node quickly is being explored. The entire Binary threshold used to decide the action to be taken software design will have to be component based to suffered from lot of false alarms. The problems were support fast nodes development for various applications. addressed by new generation of sensors equipped with capabilities to wirelessly connect with peers. Typical components added to individual sensors were low power TABLE II. COMPONENT SPECIFIC SOFTWARE IN A WSN End User Sink Nodes/Aggregator Nodes Application specific Programming Programming support for Topology control algorithms making Abstractions Simple Object Access Protocol use of routing and aggregation (SOAP) Event Assessment software Query optimization methods Application specific I/O interface with sink Data Mining software Data Intensive Streaming Sensing control algorithms Security related algorithms/protocols Pattern recognition algorithms Software implementation of Network stack Software as a Service framework Secure communication Secure compression and transmission specific to WSNs protocols algorithms Intelligent Decision Support System *All above transparent to type *All above adaptive to uncertain XML Based Databases of device surroundings Copyright © 2012 MECS I.J. Modern Education and Computer Science, 2012, 3, 1-13 Contemporary Developments in Wireless Sensor Networks 3 Battery Technology [11][12] - The battery technology has DBMS for WSNs. Communication software evolved from oldest Nickel – Cadmium heavy batteries implementing MAC and networking layer will be to lithium polymer light weight batteries nowadays. The discussed in next section. Security software is of emergence of ‘Graphene’ based batteries will increase paramount importance in view of omnipresence of sensor the battery capacity and decrease the weight by huge networks. WSN specific encryption techniques, key ratios. Interoperability between sensors from different Management modules and Intrusion Detection Systems vendors is an issue due to lack of standardization. This is are key areas of security development