Survey of Wireless Sensor Network Application

Sensor networks offer a powerful combination of distributed sensing, computing and communication. They lend themselves to countless applications and, at the same time, offer numerous challenges due to their peculiarities, primarily the stringent energy constraints to which sensing nodes are typically subjected. The distinguishing traits of sensor networks have a direct impact on the hardware design of the nodes at least four levels: power source, processor, communication hardware, and sensors. Various hardware platforms have already been designed to test the many ideas spawned by the re-search community and to implement applications to virtually all fields of science and technology. We are convinced that CAS will be able to provide a substantial contribution to the development of this exciting field. 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. The goal of our survey is to present a comprehensive review of the recent literature since the publication of [I.F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Y. Sankarasubramaniam, E. Cayirci, A survey on sensor networks, IEEE Communications Magazine, 2002]. Following a top-down approach, we give an overview of several new applications and then review the literature on various aspects of WSNs. We classify the problems into three different categories: (1) Internal platform and underlying operating system, (2) Communication protocol stack, and (3) Network services, provisioning, and deployment. We review the major development in these three categories and outline new challenges.