Significant advances in microelectromechanical micro-sensor systems (MEMS) and wireless communication technologies have promoted the development of wireless sensor networks. A WSN consists of many sensor nodes densely deployed in a field, each capable of collecting environmental information and together capable of supporting multihop ad hoc routing. WSNs provide an economical and convenient way to monitor physical environments.
With its ability to detect the environment, WSN can enrich human life in applications such as health care, building monitoring and home safety. A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of autonomously spatially distributed devices that use sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, movement, or contaminants In different locations.
The development of wireless sensor networks was originally motivated by military applications such as battlefield surveillance. However, wireless sensor networks are now being used in many areas of civilian application, including environment and habitat monitoring, sanitary applications, home automation and traffic control. Applications for WSN are many and varied. They are used in commercial and industrial applications to monitor data that would be difficult or costly to monitor using wired sensors. They could be deployed in wild areas, where they would remain for many years (control of some environmental variables) without the need to recharge / replace their power supplies. They could form a perimeter over a property and monitor the progression of intruders (passing information from one node to another).