M.A.

M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY

SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

UNIT II
SENSOR NETWORKS – INTRODUCTION & ARCHITECTURES 

Challenges for Wireless Sensor Networks, Enabling Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks,
WSN application examples, Single-Node Architecture – Hardware Components, Energy
Consumption of Sensor Nodes, Network Architecture – Sensor Network Scenarios, Transceiver
Design Considerations, Optimization Goals and Figures of Merit.

2.1 Introduction

 Wireless sensor networks are 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.
 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.

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

 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

2.2 Characteristics of Wireless Sensor Network:

The main characteristics of a WSN include:

 Power consumption constraints for nodes using batteries or energy harvesting  Ability to cope
with node failures (resilience)

 Some mobility of nodes (for highly mobile nodes see MWSNs)

 Heterogeneity of nodes

 Scalability to large scale of deployment

 Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions

 Ease of use

 Cross-layer design Cross-layer is becoming an important studying area for wireless

communications.

In addition, the traditional layered approach presents three main problems:

1. Traditional layered approach cannot share different information among different layers, which
leads to each layer not having complete information.

2. The traditional layered approach cannot guarantee the optimization of the entire network. The
traditional layered approach does not have the ability to adapt to the environmental change.

3. Because of the interference between the different users, access conflicts, fading, and the
change of environment in the wireless sensor networks, traditional layered approach for wired
networks is not applicable to wireless networks.

So the cross-layer can be used to make the optimal modulation to improve the transmission
performance, such as data rate, energy efficiency, QoS (Quality of Service), etc.

 Sensor nodes can be imagined as small computers which are extremely basic in terms of their
interfaces and their components.
 They usually consist of a processing unit with limited computational power and limited
memory, sensors or MEMS (including specific conditioning circuitry), a communication

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

device (usually radio transceivers or alternatively optical), and a power source usually in the
form of a battery.
 Other possible inclusions are energy harvesting modules, secondary ASICs, and possibly
secondary communication interface (e.g. RS- 232 or USB).
 The base stations are one or more components of the WSN with much more computational,
energy and communication resources.
 They act as a gateway between sensor nodes and the end user as they typically forward data
from the WSN on to a server.
 Other special components in routing based networks are routers, designed to compute,
calculate and distribute the routing tables.

2.3 Challenges and Issues in WSN:

2.3.1 Energy:

 Sensors require energy or power backup to operate and process various operations.
 As nodes are operated with attached battery that have limited capacity of power backup.
This power is consumed in sensing, data collection, processing and transmitting data to
sink node.
 Most of energy is used during transmission normally on average, 3,000 instructions can
be executed for the same energy cost of sending a single bit 100m by radio.
 On the other hand, remote sensors also need to active for listing sing node or base
station’s queries .During this time nodes are not doing any valuable tasks this idle period
is also the reason for wastage of energy. Most of power energy is used during Tx, RX and
Idle operation.
 This issue can be address by using energy efficient routing algorithms and managing
TX/RX operation in specific scenario
 Base station should keep track of each node or maintain a list of nodes sync history.
 For expanding life time nodes battery backup can also be divide into two banks. One
bank for sensing and processing and one for communication.by doing this load can be
divide. preictally by using this strategy life time of nodes increased by 35% in small to
medium size WSN

2.3.2Communication and routing:

 communication with base station is very challenging to keep node alive for long period of time.
Mostly, nodes only support small coverage for communication.
 Routing protocols, and deployment strategy directly affect the communication and overall
performance for WSN. Nodes normally pass information hop by hop to sink.
2.3.3.Security Issue:

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

 Security in wireless sensor network is one the critical issues. As in WSN data travel
wirelessly through the air so wireless signals are open to everyone thus, anyone can
monitor and participate as well, in communication.
 Mostly nodes in WSN operate in ISB band that is license free.
 Security become very important in commercial and especially military applications to
prevent malicious attacks, Unauthorized access and denial of service DoS attacks.

2.3.4Data Confidentiality:

 Major problem in wireless operated network is that, radio spectrum is an open medium
and can easily be monitored by everyone.
 An attacker can sniff and interfere with transmitted packet. Captured packet can be
altered for misleading information.
 Confidentiality is an assurance of legal access to information. to maintain data
confidentiality standard approach is to transmit all data after encryption with secret key
that only intended receivers process.

2.3.5Data Authenticity:

 New misleading packet can be inject into communication between nodes by attacker if he
somehow know the packet format defined in WSN protocol stack.
 Injected packet can carry misleading or incorrect information.
 In object tracking, environment monitoring application can be disturbed by injected
incorrect information.
 To overcome this issue standard approach can be used in which authenticity maintained
by use of message authentication code, signature, secret key, challenge response, multi
and broadcasting authentication.

2.3.6 Data integrity:

 Owing to instability of wireless channels, transmission errors are inherent in WSN. Due
to many reason information traveling in electromagnetic signals can be change for
example signal fading, signal reflection, signal diffraction, scattering, and various kind of
noise.
 This is the reason of wastage of transmission. Incorrect data needs to be retransmit and it
very expensive in WSN. Data integrity can be ensured by message integrity code.

2.3.7 Availability:

 Availability of sensor nodes is very important to monitor critical zones. Owing to excess
or unnecessary communication and computation sensor nodes can be run out of battery
power.

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

 To make sure the availability of nodes energy efficient routing algorithm and protocols
need to be implemented.

2.3.8 Operating system OS:

 As sensor nodes contain very limited amount of memory and processing power, an
efficient and small size OS need to address this issue.
 The operating system of sensor node must be capable of providing basic resource
management, memory management and should be less complex as compared to
traditional OS.
 TinyOS, Nano-Q plus and mantis operating system are specially designed for WSN. But
still need for improvement
2.3.9 Hardware and software issue:
 As sensor nodes reducing in size, limited amount of resource like memory, processing
speed and energy is also a issue for WSN.
 Normally, sensor node has microcontroller, sensor, transceiver, and power backup.
 In order to save power microcontroller should work in three state sleep, active and idle.

2.3.10MAC Layer Issue:

 In wireless sensor network a lot of energy wastage found at MAC layer during collision,
idle listening packet overhead, busty traffic.
 Idle listening consumes 50 to 100% of the power for receiving packets.
 S-MAC periodic listening & Sleep protocol is designed to overcome this issue. In this
protocol nodes are free to choose their listen and sleep schedule.
 Duty cycle reduced based on need.
 Nodes listen to the medium for specific time, if nothing heard, chose a schedule and
broadcast SYNC packet

2.3.11Localization:

Mostly nodes are deployed randomly in real world scenarios, it is very difficult to mange and locate
them in absence of supporting infrastructure.

2.3.12: Time Synchronization:

Sensor nodes operated in field independently, sometime their local clocks not synchronized with
other nodes that could be reason of ambiguity and uncertainty of sensed data.

2.4Enabling Technologies for Wireless Sensor Networks

2.6 Hardware components

2.6.1 Sensor node hardware overview

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

A basic sensor node comprises five main components (Figure 2.6.1):

 Controller
A controller to process all the relevant data, capable of executing arbitrary code.
 Memory
Some memory to store programs and intermediate data; usually, different types of
memory are used for programs and data.
 Sensors and actuators
The actual interface to the physical world: devices that can observe or control
physical parameters of the environment.
Communication Turning nodes into a network requires a device for sending and
receiving information over a wireless channe

Fig 2.6.1 sensor node

 Power supply

As usually no tethered power supply is available, some form of batteries are

necessary to provide energy. Sometimes, some form of recharging by obtaining
energy from the environment is available as well (e.g. solar cells).

2.6.2Controller

 Microcontrollers versus microprocessors, FPGAs, and ASICs The controller is the

core of a wireless sensor node.
 It collects data from the sensors, processes this data, decides when and where to send
it, receives data from other sensor nodes, and decides on the actuator’s behavior.
 It has to execute various programs, ranging from time-critical signal processing and
communication protocols to application programs; it is the Central Processing Unit
(CPU) of the node.

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

 Such a variety of processing tasks can be performed on various controller

architectures, representing trade-offs between flexibility, performance, energy
efficiency, and costs.
 Some of the key characteristics
 Microcontrollers are particularly suited to embedded systems are their flexibility in
connecting with other devices (like sensors), their instruction set amenable to time-critical
signal processing, and their typically low power consumption.
 They are also convenient in that they often have memory built in. In addition, they are freely
programmable and hence very flexible.
 Microcontrollers are also suitable for WSNs since they commonly have the possibility to
reduce their power consumption by going into sleep states where only parts of the
controller are active; details vary considerably between different controllers

2.6.3 Memory

 Evidently, there is a need for Random Access Memory (RAM) to store intermediate
sensor readings, packets from other nodes, and so on.
 While RAM is fast, its main disadvantage is that it loses its content if power supply is
interrupted. Program code can be stored in Read-Only Memory (ROM) or, more
typically, in Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) or
flash memory (the later being similar to EEPROM but allowing data to be erased or
written in blocks instead of only a byte at a time).
 Flash memory can also serve as intermediate storage of data in case RAM is insufficient
or when the power supply of RAM should be shut down for some time.
 The long read and write access delays of flash memory should be taken into account, as
well as the high required energy. Correctly dimensioning memory sizes, especially RAM,
can be crucial with respect to manufacturing costs and power consumption.

2.6.4 Communication device

Choice of transmission medium

 The communication device is used to exchange data between individual nodes.

 In some cases, wired communication can actually be the method of choice and is
frequently applied in many sensor network like settings (using field buses like Profibus,
LON, CAN, or others).
 The communication devices for these networks are custom off-the-shelf components. The
case of wireless communication is considerably more interesting.
 The first choice to make is that of the transmission medium – the usual choices include
radio frequencies, optical communication, and ultrasound; other media like magnetic
inductance are only used in very specific cases.

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology
 M.A.M COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY
SIRUGANUR,TRICHY-621105

 Of these choices, Radio Frequency (RF)-based communication provides relatively long

range and high data rates, acceptable error rates at reasonable energy expenditure, and
does not require line of sight between sender and receiver.

2.6.5Transceivers

 For actual communication, both a transmitter and a receiver are required in a sensor
node. The essential task is to convert a bit stream coming from a microcontroller (or a
sequence of bytes or frames) and convert them to and from radio waves.
 For practical purposes, it is usually convenient to use a device that combines these two
tasks in a single entity. Such combined devices are called transceivers.

S.Kavitha ,Associate Professor ,Department of ECE ,M.A.M college of Engg & Technology