Characteristics
The main characteristics of a WSN include
- Power consumption constrains for nodes using batteries or energy harvesting
- Ability to cope with node failures
- Mobility of nodes
- Communication failures
- Heterogeneity of nodes
- Scalability to large scale of deployment
- Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions
- Ease of use
- Power consumption
Sensor nodes can be imagined as small computers, extremely basic in terms of their interfaces and their components. They usually consist of a processing unit with limited computational power and limited memory, sensors or MEMS (including specific conditioning circuitry), a communication device (usually radio transceivers or alternatively optical), and a power source usually in the form of a battery. Other possible inclusions are energy harvesting modules, secondary ASICs, and possibly secondary communication devices (e.g. RS-232 or USB).
The base stations are one or more components of the WSN with much more computational, energy and communication resources. They act as a gateway between sensor nodes and the end user as they typically forward data from the WSN on to a server. Other special components in routing based networks are routers, designed to compute, calculate and distribute the routing tables.
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