Wireless Sensor Network

  The term "wireless" has become a generic and all-encompassing word used to describe communications in which electromagnetic waves to carry a signal over part or the entire communication path. Wireless technology can able to reach virtually every location on the surface of the earth. Due to tremendous success of wireless voice and messaging services, it is hardly surprising that wireless communication is beginning to be applied to the domain of personal and business computing.Ad- hoc and Sensor Networks are one of the parts of the wireless communication. 

In ad-hoc network each and every nodes are allow to communicate with each other without any fixed infrastructure. This is actually one of the features that differentiate between ad-hoc and other wireless technology like cellular networks and wireless LAN which actually required infrastructure based communication like through some base station.

  

Wireless sensor network are one of the category belongs to ad-hoc networks. Sensor network are also composed of nodes. Here actually the node has a specific name that is “Sensor” because these nodes are equipped with smart sensors. A sensor node is a device that converts a sensed characteristic like temperature, vibrations, pressure into a form recognize by the users.

 Wireless sensor networks nodes are less mobile than ad-hoc networks. So mobility in case of ad-hoc is more. In wireless sensor network data are requested depending upon certain physical quantity. So wireless sensor network is data centric. A sensor consists of a transducer, an embedded processor, small memory unit and a wireless transceiver and all these devices run on the power supplied by an attached battery.