Description
Overview
With the advancement of technology and miniaturization of electronic devices, applications of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be seen in diverse areas in our lives. In fact, these WSNs have gained a lot of attention from both the research community and industry, making them easily available on the market. An extensive amount of research, easy availability, and cheap cost make them useful in various types of futuristic applications as well. Given today’s trend, WSNs are increasingly becoming an essential component for future communication technologies. For instance, whenever we talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), smart cities, or cyber physical systems (CPS), we can find the role of WSNs in these technologies. However, with these diverse applications and underlying communication architectures, new research challenges have also arisen.
This book is all about wireless sensor networks. The main objective is to present different types of emerging communication technologies based on WSNs. It also describes how wireless sensor networks can be integrated with other communication technologies. Despite the availability of several previously published books on WSNs, there is a clear need for a book that contains critical information about WSNs and their use in emerging communication technologies. Additionally, many of the new techniques, including cognitive radio sensor networks, wireless nanosensor networks, and modern applications, should be covered as well. In fact, WSNs have very wide applications, now ranging from wireless body area networks to the use of wireless sensor networks in the Internet of Things. Recently, we have seen other WSN-based emerging applications in smart homes, smart cities, and satellite communications as well.
Organization of the Book
The book is composed of fourteen selected chapters, divided into four sections.
The first section contains two chapters that focus on an overview of wireless sensor networks.In Chapter 1, the authors present background on the fundamentals of such networks, basic units, and all the relevant information. Then, the principal working method of WSNs is discussed. The authors then discuss different types of WSNs. After that, the characteristics of different types of emerging technologies based on WSNs are discussed.
In Chapter 2, renewable energy sources, battery replenishment strategies, and applicationspecific energy challenges of WSNs are reviewed. The chapter starts with a brief discussion on the concepts of power consumption and saving modes. Then different types of energy harvesting techniques are presented. The authors also introduce wireless power transfer and its relevant techniques. Finally, application-specific problems of WSNs are identified.
The second section of the book contains three chapters. This section is dedicated to the issues related to wireless body area networks. Chapter 3 discusses wearable wireless sensor networks and their applications, standards, and research trends. In Chapter 4, the authors discuss routing schemes devised for wireless body area networks. Finally, Chapter 5 discusses thermal-aware routing protocols for wireless body area networks.
In the third section, we grouped the chapters that focus on different emerging communication technologies based on WSNs. Among the five chapters in this section, Chapter 6 is about electromagnetic wireless nanosensor networks. Chapter 7 discusses the use of wireless sensor networks in the IoT, while Chapter 8 focuses on the management of wireless sensor networks through satellite networks. Use of wireless sensor networks in smart homes is discussed in Chapter 9. Finally, use of cognitive radio technology in conjunction with wireless sensor networks is covered in Chapter 10.
Four chapters are grouped within the fourth and the last section of this book. The topics generally related to typical wireless sensor networks are covered here. Chapter 11 is about energyefficient data collection in wireless sensor networks. Chapter 12 is about key distribution mechanisms in wireless sensor networks. Chapter 13 discusses distributed data gathering algorithms for mobile wireless sensor networks, and finally, Chapter 14 presents a novel mobility scheme for WSNs that supports IPv6.