Handbook of Sensor Networks
Chapter One
Introduction to Wireless Sensor
Networking
FERNANDO MARTINCIC and LOREN SCHWIEBERT
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
This chapter introduces the topic of wireless sensor networks from the applications
perspective. A wireless sensor network consists of a possibly large number of wireless
devices able to take environmental measurements such as temperature, light,
sound, and humidity. These sensor readings are transmitted over a wireless channel
to a running application that makes decisions based on these sensor readings.
Authors describe some examples of proposed wireless sensor applications, and
consider the following two questions to motivate an application-based viewpoint.
What aspects of wireless sensors make the implementation of applications more
challenging, or at least different? One widely recognized issue is the limited
power available to each wireless sensor node, but there are other challenges such
as limited storage or processing. What services are required for a wireless sensor
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