Wireless Sensor Network: applications and Analysis of Routing Protocols

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks consist of small nodes with sensing, computation, and wireless communications capabilities. Recent advances in wireless sensor networks have led to many new protocols specifically designed for sensor networks where energy awareness is an essential consideration. Most of our attention, however, has been given to the routing protocols since they might differ depending on the application and network architecture. A wireless sensor network (WSN) has important applications such as remote environmental monitoring and target tracking. This has been enabled by the availability, particularly in recent years, of sensors that are smaller, cheaper, and intelligent. These sensors are equipped with wireless interfaces with which they can communicate with one another to form a network. The design of a WSN depends significantly on the application, and it must consider factors such as the environment, the application’s design objectives, cost, hardware, and system constraints. This project surveys recent routing protocols for sensor networks and presents detailed account of various routing protocols. The project also talks about the basic network topologies in wireless sensor network. The basic network topologies include fully connected, mesh, star, ring, tree, bus etc. Again we have presented various system architectures, design issues and challenges in wireless sensor network. Solution to some of these challenges and the applications of wireless sensor networks are also provided. Lastly we conclude with open research issues in WSN