Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Wireless Sensor Network

I think this article will be more useful who are interested in networking. Here I wrote about the wireless sensor networks

A wireless sensor network contains a large number of tiny sensor nodes that are densely deployed either inside the phenomenon to be sensed or very close to it. Sensor nodes consist of sensing, data processing, and communicating components. The position of sensor nodes need not be engineered or predetermined.

Wired sensor networks have been around for decades, with an array of gauges measuring temperature, fluid levels, humidity, and other attributes on pipelines, pumps, generators, and manufacturing lines. Many of these run as separately wired networks, sometimes linked to a computer but often to a control panel that fl ashes lights or sounds an alarm when a temperature rises too high or a machine vibrates too much. Also wired in are actuators, which let the control panel slow down a pump or start a fan in response to the sensor data.

Now advances in silicon radio chips, coupled with cleverly designed routing algorithms and network software are promising to eliminate those wires and their installation and maintenance costs. Mesh network topologies will let these wireless networks route around nodes that fail or whose radio signal is degraded by interferencefrom heavy equipment.

A gateway will create a two-way link with legacy control systems, hosts, wired local area networks (WLANs), or the Internet Wireless sensor networks can use several different wireless technologies, including IEEE 802.11 WLANs, Bluetooth, and radio frequency identifi cation (RFID). But at present most of the applications are of low-power radios having a range of about 30 to 200 feet and data rates of up to around 300 kbps. IEEE 802.15.4 is the approved low-rate standard for a simple, short-range wireless network whose radio components could run several years on a single battery.

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