Wireless Sensor Network Management and Functionality: An Overview

Sensor networks are dense wireless networks of small, low-cost sensors, which collect and disseminate environmental data. Wireless sensor networks facilitate monitoring and controlling of physical environments from remote locations with better accuracy. They have applications in a variety of fields such as environmental monitoring; military purposes and gathering sensing information in inhospitable locations. Sensor nodes have various energy and computational constraints because of their inexpensive nature and adhoc method of deployment. Considerable research has been focused at overcoming these deficiencies through more energy efficient routing, localization algorithms and system design. Our survey presents the fundamentals of wireless sensor network, thus providing the necessary background required for understanding the organization, functionality and limitations of those networks. The middleware solution is also investigated through a critical presentation and analysis of some of the most well established approaches.