Wireless Sensor Network Architecture and Its Applications

Currently, WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) is the most standard services employed

in commercial and industrial applications, because of its technical development in a
processor, communication, and low-power usage of embedded computing devices.
The WSN is built with nodes that are used to observe the surroundings like
temperature, humidity, pressure, position, vibration, sound etc. These nodes can be
used in various real-time applications to perform various tasks like smart detecting,
a discovery of neighbor node, data processing and storage, data collection, target
tracking, monitor and controlling, synchronization, node localization, and effective
routing between the base station and nodes.
Presently, WSNs are beginning to be organized in an enhanced step. It is not
awkward to expect that in 10 to 15 years that the world will be protected with
WSNs with entree to them via the Internet. This can be measured as the Internet
becoming a physical n/w. This technology is thrilling with infinite potential for
many application areas like medical, environmental, transportation, military,
entertainment, homeland defense, crisis management and also smart spaces.

What is a Wireless Sensor Network?

A Wireless Sensor Network is one kind of wireless network includes a large

number of circulating, self-directed, minute, low powered devices named
sensor nodes called motes. These networks certainly cover a huge number of
spatially distributed, little, battery-operated, embedded devices that are
networked to caringly collect, process, and transfer data to the operators, and
it has controlled the capabilities of computing & processing. Nodes are the tiny
computers, which work jointly to form the networks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN), as the name suggests, is a networking paradigm

that makes use of spatially distributed sensors for gathering information concerning
the immediate environment of the sensors and collecting the information centrally.
Here, the sensors are not standalone devices but a combination of sensors,
processors, and radio units—referred to as sensor nodes—sensing the
environment and communicating the sensed data wirelessly to a remote location,
which may or may not be connected to a backbone network. Figure 3.1 shows the
block diagram of the various standard components of a typical WSN node . The
exact specifications of each of these blocks vary depending on the implementation
requirements and the network architect’s choice.

Figure 3.2 shows a typical WSN implementation, where the master node aggregates
data from multiple slave nodes, forwards it to a remote server utilizing access to the
Internet through cellular connectivity. The stored data on the server can be
visualized by a user or a subscriber to the system from anywhere in the world over
the Internet. WSNs mainly follow a system of communication known as master–
slave architecture. In a master–slave architecture, a single aggregator node, the
master, is responsible for collecting data from various sensor nodes under its
dominion or range of operations. The sensor nodes under the range of the master
node are referred to as slave nodes. Multiple slave nodes communicate to the master
node using lowpower short-range wireless radios such as Zigbee, Bluetooth, and
WiFi for transferring their sensed data to a remote central server. Often, in popular
WSN architectures, the master node connects the WSN to the Internet and acts as
the gateway for the WSN. Upon collecting data from the slave nodes, the master
node pushes the aggregated data to a remotely located central server using the
Internet. The master node may be linked to the Internet through cellular
connections, another gateway, or directly through a backbone infrastructure.

WSNs must have the following distinguishing features:

(i) Fault Tolerance: The occurrence of faults in WSN nodes should not take
down the whole WSN implementation, or hamper the transmission of data from
non faulty nodes to the central location.
(ii) Scalability: WSN implementations must have the feature of scalability
associated with their architectures and deployments. In the event of a future
increase or decrease of sensor node units, the WSN must support the scaling of
the infrastructure without changing the whole implementation.
(iii) Long lifetime: The lifetime or the energy replenishment cycle of WSNs must
be long enough to make large-scale applications feasible. WSNs have been
used for monitoring remote, harsh, and hard to access environments; in these
environments, it is not feasible to regularly replenish the energy source of the
WSN nodes, which necessitates the need for long node lifetimes.
(iv) Security: The security of WSNs, if not considered, can easily compromise the
security of the whole system, right back to the central server. As WSNs are
used for a wide range of applications, some of which are crucial, security is
one aspect that must be properly addressed to prevent intrusion and maintain
the integrity of the data.
(v) Programmability: The programmability of WSNs is important as it ensures the
robustness of these systems. WSNs deployed in one application area can be
reused for other applications just as easily with a change in sensors and the
backend programs associated with it. Programmability also helps in providing
 a means of adjusting the parameters of the system in the event of a scale-up or
scale-down operation.
(vi) Affordability: As WSNs generally require multiple units, typically in the range
of tens or hundreds of WSN nodes, the cost of the nodes and its affordability is
vastly responsible for the acceptability of the system. Except for some
specialized domains such as the military and the industry, where the sensing
requirements are quite high and that too in harsh and challenging conditions,
the majority of WSN applications are regular. To some extent, the cost of
WSN deployments in these regular domains decide the acceptability of a
WSN-based solution for that domain.
(vii) Heterogeneity: The WSNs must support a wide number and various types
of sensors and solutions, thus enabling heterogeneity. In the absence of
heterogeneity, the WSN will tend to become very application-specific, which
in turn would require major customizations even in the event of minor changes
to the network or architecture.
(viii) Mobility: WSNs must support the notion of mobility of nodes such that the
nodes may be easily relocatable or mobile. Mobility would ensure the rapid
deploy ability of WSN-based solutions in all environments types

Wireless Sensor Network

The sensor node is a multi-functional, energy efficient wireless device. The
applications of nodes in industrial are widespread. A collection of sensor nodes
collects the data from the surroundings to achieve specific application objectives.
The communication between nodes can be done with each other using transceivers.
In a wireless sensor network, the number of nodes can be in the order of hundreds/
even thousands. In contrast with sensor n/ws, Ad Hoc networks will have fewer
nodes without any structure.

Wireless Sensor Network Architecture

The most common WSN architecture follows the OSI architecture Model. The
architecture of the WSN includes five layers and three cross layers. Mostly in
sensor n/w we require five layers, namely application, transport, n/w, data link &
physical layer. The three cross planes are namely power management, mobility
management, and task management. These layers of the WSN are used to
accomplish the n/w and make the sensors work together in order to raise the
complete efficiency of the network.Please follow the below link for: Types of
wireless sensor networks and WSN topologies
Types of WSN Architectures

The architecture used in WSN is sensor network architecture. This kind of

architecture is applicable in different places such as hospitals, schools, roads,
buildings as well as it is used in different applications such as security
management, disaster management & crisis management, etc. There are two
types of architectures used in wireless sensor networks which include the following.

There are 2 types of wireless sensor architectures: Layered Network Architecture,

and Clustered Architecture. These are explained as following below.

 Layered Network Architecture

 Clustered Network Architecture
Layered Network Architecture

This kind of network uses hundreds of sensor nodes as well as a base station.
Here the arrangement of network nodes can be done into concentric layers. It
comprises five layers as well as 3 cross layers which include the following.

The five layers in the architecture are:

 Application Layer
 Transport Layer
 Network Layer
 Data Link Layer
 Physical Layer
The three cross layers include the following:

 Power Management Plane

 Mobility Management Plane
 Task Management Plane
These three cross layers are mainly used for controlling the network as well as
to make the sensors function as one in order to enhance the overall network
efficiency. The above mentioned five layers of WSN are discussed below.
Wireless Sensor Network Architecture
Application Layer

The application layer is liable for traffic management and offers software for
numerous applications that convert the data in a clear form to find positive
information. Sensor networks arranged in numerous applications in different fields
such as agricultural, military, environment, medical, etc.

Transport Layer

The function of the transport layer is to deliver congestion avoidance and reliability
where a lot of protocols intended to offer this function are either practical on the
upstream. These protocols use dissimilar mechanisms for loss recognition and loss
recovery. The transport layer is exactly needed when a system is planned to contact
other networks.

Providing a reliable loss recovery is more energy efficient and that is one of the
main reasons why TCP is not fit for WSN. In general, Transport layers can be
separated into Packet driven, Event driven. There are some popular protocols in the
transport layer namely STCP (Sensor Transmission Control Protocol), PORT
(Price-Oriented Reliable Transport Protocol and PSFQ (pump slow fetch quick).

Network Layer
The main function of the network layer is routing, it has a lot of tasks based on the
application, but actually, the main tasks are in the power conserving, partial
memory, buffers, and sensor don’t have a universal ID and have to be self-
organized.

The simple idea of the routing protocol is to explain a reliable lane and redundant
lanes, according to a convinced scale called metric, which varies from protocol to
protocol. There are a lot of existing protocols for this network layer, they can be
separate into; flat routing and hierarchal routing or can be separated into time
driven, query-driven & event driven.

Data Link Layer

The data link layer is liable for multiplexing data frame detection, data streams,
MAC, & error control, confirm the reliability of point–point (or) point– multipoint.

Physical Layer

The physical layer provides an edge for transferring a stream of bits above physical
medium. This layer is responsible for the selection of frequency, generation of
a carrier frequency, signal detection, Modulation & data encryption. IEEE 802.15.4
is suggested as typical for low rate particular areas & wireless sensor network with
low cost, power consumption, density, the range of communication to improve the
battery life. CSMA/CA is used to support star & peer to peer topology. There are
several versions of IEEE 802.15.4.V.

Characteristics of Wireless Sensor Network

The characteristics of WSN include the following.

 The consumption of Power limits for nodes with batteries

 Capacity to handle with node failures
 Some mobility of nodes and Heterogeneity of nodes
 Scalability to large scale of distribution
 Capability to ensure strict environmental conditions
 Simple to use
 Cross-layer design
Advantages of Wireless Sensor Networks
The advantages of WSN include the following

 Network arrangements can be carried out without immovable infrastructure.

 Apt for the non-reachable places like mountains, over the sea, rural areas and
deep forests.
 Flexible if there is a casual situation when an additional workstation is
required.
 Execution pricing is inexpensive.
 It avoids plenty of wiring.
 It might provide accommodations for the new devices at any time.
 It can be opened by using a centralized monitoring.
Wireless Sensor Network Applications WSNs have found numerous
applications in domains such as agriculture, healthcare, military, industries,
mining, and others. The main reason for the popularity of WSNs is attributed
to the advantages they provide in the form of enhanced monitoring times, easy
installation, and multiple implementations. Implementations on a large scale
are possible due to high affordability, ease of replacement or upgradation, ease
of modifying system parameters, ease of additional sensor integration with the
sensor nodes, and other such factors.

Wireless sensor networks may comprise of numerous different types of sensors like
low sampling rate, seismic, magnetic, thermal, visual, infrared, radar, and acoustic,
which are clever to monitor a wide range of ambient situations. Sensor nodes are
used for constant sensing, event ID, event detection & local control of actuators.
The applications of wireless sensor network mainly include health, military,
environmental, home, & other commercial areas.

WSN Application
 Military Applications
 Health Applications
 Environmental Applications
 Home Applications
 Commercial Applications
 Area monitoring
 Health care monitoring
 Environmental/Earth sensings
 Air pollution monitoring
 Forest fire detection
 Landslide detection
 Water quality monitoring
 Industrial monitoring
Thus, this is all about what is a wireless sensor network, WSN architecture,
characteristics, and applications. We hope that you have hot a better understanding
of this concept. Furthermore, any queries or to know about wireless sensor network
project ideas, please give your valuable suggestions by commenting in the comment
section below. Here is a question for you, 

Classes of Wireless Sensor Networks

The portability and robustness of WSN solutions, in addition to the significantly

enhanced operational lifetimes, made WSNs quite a popular choice for applications
in various diverse areas. Some of the applications of WSNs include the following:
(i) Military Applications: WSNs are used for the detection of enemy soldiers,
vehicles, intrusion, weapon systems, and armaments.
(ii) Health Applications: WSNs in healthcare are being used to monitor patients
in hospitals, ambulances, and homes. Nowadays, a new class of healthcare
devices—wearable appliances—enable a user to have a miniature health sensor
on them without additional discomfort.
(iii) Environmental Applications: WSNs are used for environmental monitoring of
pollution, tracking of wildlife, forests, and others.
(iv) Home Applications: WSNs in the home have given rise to home automation
systems and smart home connectivity systems.
(v) Commercial Applications: WSNs are used for tracking of vehicles, packages in
transport, logistics, and others.
(vi) Industrial Monitoring: WSNs in industries keep track of various industrial
processes, monitor factory floors, ensure worker safety, and perform stock
management.

WSNs can be organized broadly into the following domains of implementation

(Figure 3.4): 1) Wireless multimedia sensor networks, 2) underwater sensor
networks,3) wireless underground sensor networks, and 4) wireless mobile sensor
networks.
Typically, these networks have specific challenges that need to be addressed in each
ofthese implementation areas.
(i) Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSN): This class of WSNs boasts
of the ability to retrieve videos, audios, images, or all three in addition to regular
scalar sensor readings. The sensing range and coverage area of a camera based
WMSN are defined by the field of view (FOV) of the constituent cameras.Because
of their superlative capabilities, WMSNs are popularly sought after in critical
domains such as surveillance and road traffic monitoring. However,due to the use
of multimedia sensors, the power and processing requirements of this class of
WSNs are very high as compared to the other classes ofWSNs. Additionally,
WMSNs typically demand high network bandwidths for convenient operation. Cell
A in Figure 3.4 shows WMSNs.

(ii) Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSN): This class of WSN is designed

specifically to work in underwater environments. Compared to terrestrial
or aerial environments, wireless underwater communications are severely
restricted in terms of data rate, range, and bandwidth due to the high underwater
attenuation of electromagnetic signals. The reliable use of light based underwater
communication is also limited in terms of range and noise.

The most accepted global means of underwater communication is by acoustic

waves. However, the long propagation delays and uneven data rate makes it
necessary to develop newer topologies and architectures, which can work under
the conditions of severe limitations of the physical layer. Cell B in Figure 3.4
shows the deployment of UWSN.
(iii) Wireless Underground Sensor Networks (WUSN): This class of WSNs is
designed to be deployed entirely underground. The underground environment
poses challenges of attenuation due to the rocks and minerals in the soil. Another
significant problem associated with this class is the need for digging up of the nodes
to replenish their energy sources. Typical usage scenarios of this class of WSNs are
underground mines and monitoring of underground plumbing systems. WUSNs
need denser deployment architectures owing to the limited range of wireless
communication in underground environments. Cell C in Figure 3.4 shows the
deployment of WUSN.
(iv) Wireless Mobile Sensor Networks (MSN): This class of WSNs is characterized
by its mobility and low power requirements. The sensor nodes are mobile, which
requires them to rapidly connect to networks, disconnect from them, and then again
connect to new networks until the nodes are mobile. Typical examples of MSNs
include smartphone networks, wearables, vehicular networks, and others.Cell D in
Figure 3.4 illustrates an MSN.

1. Explain Wireless Sensor Network Architecture and Its Applications.

2. What is a Wireless Sensor Network?
3. Characteristics of Wireless Sensor Network
4. Advantages of Wireless Sensor Networks
5. Wireless Sensor Network Applications
6. Mention limitations of WSN.
7. What is a sensor cloud?
8. Differentiate between WSN ans sensor cloud.
9. Describe actors in sensor cloud.
10.Describe sensor cloud architecture.
11.Explain workflow of sensor cloud.
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(i) What are WSNs?
(ii) What are the typical components of a WSN system?
(iii) What factors determine the utility of WSN?
(iv) Discuss the cross-layer management plane in WSN.
(v) What are the various classes of WSNs?