Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications: a Survey

In this research work, a survey on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and their technologies, standards and applications was carried out. Wireless sensor networks consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Many routing, power management, and data dissemination protocols have been specifically designed for WSNs where energy awareness is an essential design issue. Routing protocols in WSNs might differ depending on the application and network architecture. A multidisciplinary research area such as wireless sensor networks, where close collaboration between users, application domain experts, hardware designers, and software developers is needed to implement efficient systems. The flexibility, fault tolerance, high sensing fidelity, low cost, and rapid deployment characteristics of sensor networks create many new and exciting application areas for remote sensing. In the future, this wide range of application areas will make sensor networks an integral part of our lives. However, realization of sensor networks needs to satisfy the constraints introduced by factors such as fault tolerance, scalability, cost, hardware, topology change, environment, and power consumption.