ABSTRACT
Recent advances in sensing technology, wireless communication, and digital computing techniques have led to the creation and subsequent proliferation of wireless sensor networks (WSN). A WSN can be broadly described as a network of nodes that makes a collaborative effort in sensing certain specified data around its periphery and thereby controls the surrounding environment (Verdone et al. 2008). It is usually a concatenation of a data acquisition network and a data dissemination network. The data acquisition network consists of the actual sensor nodes along with the mobile or stationary base station (sink node); the data dissemination network is a collection of wired and wireless networks that is involved in postprocessing of the acquired data. However, the acquisition network is severely constrained in computing, storage, and power levels when compared to the dissemination network. A stark distinction between WSN and other legacy wireless networks is the decentralized architecture. In addition, the higher
scalability ratio in connection with node deployment and hazardous operating environments distinguish WSN from legacy wireless networks such as cellular or mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET).
