When people ask "What's a
Wireless Sensor Network", they generally are not network engineers nor do
they understand the subtleties in networking lingo. Yet, at a conceptual level,
Wireless Sensor Networks are not difficult to understand if you start with a
little knowledge most of us already possess about Wi-Fi.
We have become quite adept at
connecting our PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet, etc. to Wi-Fi networks and hot
spots. For simplicity we will use the term PC generically to represent the
array of computers and smart devices that connect to a Wi-Fi network. Using
networking terminology, your PC is considered a node when it is attached to a
Wi-Fi network. In this case, the node or your PC is 'smart' because it is
capable of advanced computing and communications functions. Most PC's have a
powerful 32 or 64 bit processor. In order to connect the PC to the Wi-Fi
network, it must have a radio that communicates wirelessly to an access point
which is usually a modem or network hot spot.
In the case of a wireless sensor
network, the nodes are 'smart' just like a Wi-Fi network, but instead of being
PC's they are sensors. This can be any type of sensor such as temperature,
light, sound, pressure, vibration, detect gas, decay, motion, etc. Just like
the PC's in a Wi-Fi network, sensor nodes have processors, but tend to be less
powerful (usually 8-bit microprocessors).
Wireless sensor networks differ from
Wi-Fi networks in that they are designed for managing sensors. This may seem
obvious, but under the hood WSN's are designed to consume significantly less
power. This differs from Wi-Fi networks in two fundamental ways. First, unlike
a PC, sensor nodes may need to run for months or years on a pair of AA+
batteries. This means each component of the node and network must be optimized
to conserve power. Most sensor nodes use smaller 8 bit microprocessor rather
than their more powerful and high energy consuming 32-bit cousins found in
PC's. When the nodes on a WSN are not being used, they are put into sleep mode.
Second, Wi-Fi networks use a
significant amount of bandwidth and therefore a significant amount of radio
power. For example, Wi-Fi is designed to handle large volumes of data such as
movies, videos, music, and other large files. Sensor data, on the other hand,
only needs a fraction of the network bandwidth because it's closer to the size
of a tweet. Because node data is significantly less, WSN's use a smaller amount
bandwidth. This means nodes connected to a WSN's also uses less radio power
conserving node battery life.
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