A Survey on Fault Tolerance in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are useful for monitoring of physical conditions and passing the data gathered to the required location. They are like any other system prone to failure due to limitation of resources. In this paper we address fault tolerance concept in general, give analysis to the definition of fault tolerance and terms related to it based on the system requirements. We explored redundancy and touched upon fault tolerance in Wireless Sensor Networks. Topics covered include redundancy in hardware, NModules Redundancy (NMR), and software including N-version programming and check pointing. We also cover fault tolerance in Wireless sensor networks including connectivity and coverage and multipath. Keywords—fault tolerance, fault prevention, redundancy, dependability; connectivity, coverage; multiple path