OPEN TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Volume 2, Number 1, March 2015

OPEN TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

A Survey On Research Issues in Wireless

Sensor Networks
Santar Pal Singh*, S. C. Sharma
Electronics and Computer Discipline, DPT, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee (India)
*Corresponding author: sps78dpt@iitr.ernet.in

Abstract:
Wireless Sensor Networks make a tremendous growth and becomes an emerging research area in wireless
and distributed networks. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is comprised of huge number of small and cheap
devices recognized as sensor nodes. The sensor nodes are capable of sensing, actuating, and controlling
the collected information. The sensor nodes communicate together by many wireless strategies and these
communication strategies are administered by routing protocols. Performance of sensor networks largely
depends on the some factors. Keeping this in mind, we have carried out extensive survey on issues in
wireless sensor networks. Finally, this paper summarized the research issues and pointed out some future
directions.
Keywords:
WSN; Challenges; Issues; Routing; Communication Strategy

1. INTRODUCTION
Due to recent technological advancements and application demands, different classes of wireless networks have
arisen as Ad hoc networks, Sensor networks and Mesh networks. The Ad hoc networks are infrastructure independent
networks [1]. The progression of wireless sensor networks [2, 3] was initially motivated by military applications.
Though, wireless sensor networks are now a day used in numerous civilian application areas like: monitoring,
tracking, automation, traffic control, and healthcare applications. The WSN is composed of wireless modules capable
of sensing, communication and computation capacities. A typical WSN is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Wireless Sensor Network (Source: [4]).

A wireless node Mica2 is shown in Figure 2.
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OPEN TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Figure 2. Mica2 Sensor Node (Source: [5]).

The key components [2, 6] of a node are: a micro sensor, a microprocessor, a memory, a battery, and a transceiver
to communicate with rest of the networks. The basic components of sensor nodes are shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Components of a Sensor Node (Source: [7]).

In this paper, authors present an ample survey of various research issues in recent years. The rest of the paper is
organized as follows. Section 2, focused on the factors influencing the sensor network design. Section 3, describes
the classification of broad issues in wireless sensor networks. Section 4, focuses on the various issues and active
research area related to particular issue. Section 5, concludes the paper.

2. FACTORS INFLUENCING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK DESIGN

WSN design is affected by various factors like: production costs, operating environment, hardware constraints,
network topology, transmission media, fault tolerance, scalability, and power consumption [2, 8]. These factors are of
much importance due to their contribution in design and development of a protocol or algorithm for WSNs.

2.1 Production Cost

The wireless sensor network comprised of huge number of sensor nodes, so the cost of a single node plays a crucial
role in the justification of complete network cost [9]. Hence, the manufacturing cost of the node must be low. Present
technology allows a Bluetooth based system to be less than of few dollars. Pico Nodes manufacturing cost is to be
kept as low as of one dollar [10, 11]. The nodes production cost is a challenging issue and it should be kept as low as
possible.

A Survey On Research Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks

2.2 Operating Environment

The nodes in sensor networks are densely deployed. So, they generally work unattended in inaccessible geographic
locations [3, 12]. They might be working as follows: in busy intersections, on the surface or at the bottom of ocean,
in the interior of machinery, in battlefield, attached to animals or fast moving vehicles etc. The above mentioned
things give us an idea about the working conditions of sensor nodes.

2.3 Hardware Constraints

A sensor node is made up of four basic units: a sensing unit, a processing unit, a power unit, and a transceiver
unit. There might be some application specific components attached with sensor node like: a power generator, a
location finding system, and a mobilize [7, 13]. The signals captured by sensing unit are sent to processing unit. The
processing unit manages the process that creates the node collaborative to carry out the specified tasks. Transceivers
unit connect node to network. Power unit must be backed by a energy scavenging unit like solar cell. Some other
application dependent units are also there. The various routing schemes and sensing tasks have need of the location
awareness. Thats why location finding unit is there. A mobilizer may sometimes be required to furnish sensor
mobility to carry out the specific tasks.

2.4 Network Topology

The remote and unattended sensor nodes, which are more prone to failures, make topology management a
challenging job. Node densities may be variable but at most 20 nodes per cubic meter [14, 15]. The topology
maintenance issues can be examined in following phases: Deployment phase, Post-deployment phase, Re-deployment
of supplementary nodes.

2.5 Transmission Media

The nodes are connected via wireless medium in case of multi hop sensor network. The wireless links are formed
by radio, infrared or optical media. For the enabling of network operation globally, the communication medium must
be available worldwide. A low-cost and low-power transceiver is required by network. Due to some constrains and
tradeoff between antenna efficiency and power consumption limits, the choice of carrier frequency in such cases to
be of ultra high range [16]. Most of the existing sensor hardware is based on RF circuit design. The WINS also
based on radio links [17]. One other possible mode of inter node communication is infrared i.e. license free and
robust to interference but the problem is its dependency on line of sight. One exciting development is smart dust
mote [18], which is capable of autonomous sensing, computing, and communication tasks and uses optical medium
for communication.

2.6 Fault Tolerance

The network tasks must not be affected by node failures. This is a reliability concern. So, the fault tolerance is
the ability to maintain the functionalities of network without any interruption owing to node failures [1921]. Fault
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tolerance has to be high when sensed data are critical i.e. WSN used in a battlefield for surveillance.

2.7 Scalability
The number of nodes deployed in sensor field might be of the order of few numbers to few thousands in accordance
with application. The new approaches must be capable to work with the nodes. They should be able to exploit the
dense nature of the network [22].

2.8 Power Consumption

The wireless node be able to equipped with a limited power source. There are a few scenarios in which replacement
of power resources not viable. So, the lifetime of nodes strongly depend on depletion time of battery [23? ]. In
multihop network each node plays the dual role of data originator and data router. The failures of some affect
significant changes in topology and may requires the network re-organization [24, 25]. Hence, the conservation and
management of power take some additional significance.

3. CLASSIFICATION OF ISSUES IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Current wireless and embedded technology opens some way outs for the design and development of various
categories of WSN based applications. To facilitate WSN based applications, the range of tasks can be categorized
into the groups as shown in Figure 4. First group is the system. Each node is a single system. To provide support
for diverse application software on sensor system, development of new platforms, operating systems, and storage
schemes are required. Second group is communication protocols, which facilitate the communication between
applications and sensors as well as inter node communication. The last group is the services which are nodded to
improve the application, performance of system and network efficiency.
From the applications requirements point of views, it is needed that WSN must possess self organizing capabilities.
Due to sensor networks limited power, processing, and storage capacity, new protocols and network services are
required to fulfill these necessities. The protocols consist of five main protocol layers for exchanging the packets:
application layer, transport layer, network layer, data link layer, and physical layer. In this paper, a study on address
dynamics of protocols and energy utilization of network has been done. Functions such as deployment, localization,
synchronization, calibration, data aggregation, data base centric and querying comes under network services.
Implementation of protocols can significantly affect utilization of energy, delay, and efficiency. It is of much
importance to optimize the communication and energy usage. Conventional protocols do not work in case of WSNs
since they are not expected to meet these requirements. Now a day, new energy aware protocols are there for each
layer of the stack. Some of these protocols are enabled with cross layer optimization by making interaction across the
layers. The sensor network protocol stack is shown in Figure 5.

4. VARIOUS ISSUES AND ACTIVE RESEARCH AREA

The most important issues that affect the design and performance of wireless sensor networks are as follows:
1. Hardware
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A Survey On Research Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks

Figure 4. Taxonomy of broad issues in a WSN.

Figure 5. Sensor networks protocol stack (Source: [26]).

2. Operating system
3. Wireless radio support
4. Deployment
5. Localization
6. Synchronization
7. Calibration
8. MAC layer
9. Network layer
10. Transport layer
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11. Data aggregation and data dissemination

12. Data base centric and querying
13. Architecture
14. Programming model
15. Middleware
16. Quality of service
17. Security
In this section, we briefly discuss each issue and active research area in accordance with each issue.

4.1 Hardware
A sensor node is comprised of a sensor and a mote as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Smart Dust Node (Source: [27]).

The components of sensor node are shown in Figure 3. The several design issues of sensor node hardware are
[28]:
i. Radio range must be expected up to few kilometers
ii. Use of memory chip is recommended
iii. Energy consumption of device should be minimized
iv. Sensor nodes must be cheap
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Different methods to improve reception of signal
ii. Development of low-cost, low-power sensors
iii. Different schemes to conserve and optimize node power
iv. Simple modulation schemes
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A Survey On Research Issues in Wireless Sensor Networks

4.2 Operating system

An operating system works as intermediary between user and hardware. Operating system for sensor node should
be able to provide services in a constrained environment. There are several operating systems have designed for
sensors like TinyOS, Mantis OS, Nano-Qplus etc [2931]. TinyOS is popular operating system accommodated both
by research and industry community for WSNs. The TinyOS interfacing is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. TinyOS interfacing (Source: [32]).

The diverse issues in designing of WSNs operating system are:
i. Concurrency management
ii. OS should be platform independent and application driven
iii. OS must have some intrinsic features to increase the energy efficiency
iv. OS should be priority based and enabled with easy programming paradigm
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Development of cost effective operating systems
ii. Design and development of open source operating systems
iii. Design and development of more user friendly operating systems

4.3 Wireless radio support

Performance of WSNs relies on the communication quality. But generally the sensor networks communication is
of random nature. The various issues in design of wireless communication are:
i. Low power consumption
ii. Distributed sensing
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iii. Multihop networking

iv. Short range transmission is considered due to being eavesdropped in long range communication
v. Communication system must contain error control subsystem
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Designing of low power consuming communication system
ii. Designing of CMOS circuits techniques
iii. Design and development of new architectures for integrated systems
iv. Designing of modulation methods
v. Development of selection criteria for data rate

4.4 Deployment
The setting up of an active network in a real world situation is known as deployment [33]. Deployment is a
cumbersome activity. Sensor node can be deployed in different manners. The diverse issues in deployment of sensor
networks are [34, 35]:
Problem of data loss
Concurrent transmission attempts
Physical length of links
Low data yield
Self configuration characteristics
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Methods for improvement of the antennas range and visibility
ii. Methods for detection of wrong sensor readings
iii. Reduction in latency and congestion

4.5 Synchronization
Synchronization is a vital service in WSNs. A clock synchronization service has to cater certain challenges in
comparison with infrastructure based networks [3638]. The synchronization protocols initiated in literature are
Reference Broadcast Schemes and Delay Time synchronization protocols. The various issues in synchronization are:
i. Energy utilization of synchronization schemes
ii. Lifetime and degree of failures of sensor nodes
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iii. Data fusion and data estimation

iv. Degree of accuracy
v. Jitter
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Design and development of analytical models for synchronization in multihop system
ii. Methods for improving radio communication in protocols like RBS and LTS

4.6 Calibration
The method of checking or adjusting the raw sensor data into altered values by making comparison of it with some
customary values is known as calibration. The various issues in synchronization are:
i. Calibration interface
ii. Accessibility of sensors in the sensor field
iii. Application specific calibration
iv. Requirement of calibration in complex dynamic environment
v. Accuracy and resiliency against random errors
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Designing of unlike calibration schemes
ii. Design and development of application specific calibration schemes

4.7 MAC layer

The medium access control (MAC) protocols immediately manage the radio of sensor network nodes. MAC
protocols must be designed to control energy consumption to influence the lifetime of network [39]. The design
issues of MAC protocols are:
i. Design of MAC protocol should take care of control mechanism of transceivers
ii. MAC protocol should avoid collisions
iii. Scalability and decentralization must be taken care of during MAC protocol designing
iv. Latency must be minimized and throughput must be maximized
v. Message passing must be there in MAC protocols
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vi. Uniformity in reporting the events by MAC protocols must be taken care of
vii. MAC protocols must consider the problem of information asymmetry
viii. MAC protocols must satisfy the requirements of real time environments
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Fine tuning of radio parameters
ii. Mobility of nodes
iii. Optimization criteria such as latency or data delivery
iv. Cross layer design

4.8 Network layer

In the past years, WSNs are being developed in accordance with application. Hence, routing plays an essential role
for transmission of data between nodes and base station (BS). So the routing is one of the key issues in WSNs. The
issues at network layer are [40, 41]:
i. Energy efficiency
ii. Multipath design techniques
iii. Fault tolerance
iv. Multi hop communication
v. Platform flexibility
vi. Heterogeneous nature
vii. Data centric
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Contention issue
ii. Traffic management
iii. Scalability
iv. Topology management
v. New internetworking schemes

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4.9 Transport layer

This layer is of special use and needed when the system is intended to be accessed through external networks.
TCP with its existing transmission window mechanism does match to intense characteristics of environments. TCP
splitting [42] might be required for the interaction of the network interact with external networks. In this approach,
TCP connections are ended at sink nodes, and the communications between the sink nodes and sensor nodes has been
managed by special protocol. However, the user and sink node communicate with each other with the help of UDP or
TCP. On the other hand, the sink and sensor nodes communicate with each other purely by UDP type protocols. The
various issues for transport protocols are as [4345]:
i. Transmission of fragmented messages
ii. Congestion control
iii. Reliability
iv. End-to-end communication and node failures
v. Data loss
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Multipath routing
ii. Priority based routing
iii. Hardware constraints like power and memory

4.10 Data aggregation and data dissemination

Data gathering is one of the major objectives of the sensor nodes. Data generated from sensors in often redundant
and huge in amount. Hence, we require a technique for uniting the sensed data into some quality information and
this is achieved through data aggregation [46]. Data aggregation is considered as the method of aggregating the
data from multiple sensors to remove redundant communication and estimating the desired answer about the sensed
phenomenon, then furnishing fused information to the BS. Data dissemination is a method by which the data and
queries are routed in the sensor network [47]. Flooding is one important protocol that uses data dissemination scheme.
Some design issues in data aggregation and data dissemination are:
i. Up-to date information of adjacent nodes
ii. Data transmission
iii. Redundancy elimination
iv. Clustering techniques improvements
v. In-Network data aggregation improvements
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Open research area

The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Energy conservation
ii. Tradeoffs handling
iii. Security
iv. Quality of service

4.11 Data base centric and querying

WSNs have the prospective to extent and monitor a large area making huge quantity of data. Hence, sensor
networks must be capable to entertain the queries and responds with some useful results. Some of the design issues
are [4850]:
i. Node depletion
ii. Interferences
iii. Data updation
iv. Storage constraints
v. Communication primitives
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Spatio-temporal querying
ii. Multi query optimization
iii. Data storage design
iv. Model for deploying and managing sensor database
v. Communication overhead elimination

4.12 Architecture
Architecture is the foremost factor that influences the growth of the sensor network. Architecture is considered as
collection of some rules and regulation for utilizing the functionality with a set of interfaces, functional components,
protocols and physical hardware. Some issues that must be addressed are [5153]:
i. Channel monitoring
ii. Data encoding and transfer
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iii. Scalability
iv. Flexibility
v. Precision of control
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Abstraction unification
ii. Efficiency of resources utilization

4.13 Programming model

Programmers are much worried about fine grain details like: sensing and inter node communication. There are
substantial activities for designing programming models for the sensor networks due to the issues given as [54]:
i. Event driven model
ii. Energy efficiency
iii. Errors and complexity
iv. Bandwidth utilization
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Methods for improvement in ease of programming languages
ii. Improving NesC and GalsC

4.14 Middleware
Middleware can be considered as software infrastructures that fasten with the network hardware and operating
systems. Middleware be supposed to make easy development, maintenance, deployment, and execution of WSN
based applications. Some design issue in middleware for WSNs are [5558]:
i. Paradigm for application specific APIs
ii. Mechanism for real time services
iii. Tradeoff between generality and specificity
iv. Scalability and mobility
v. Security
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Open research area

The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Design and implementation
ii. Developer friendliness
iii. Energy consumption

4.15 Quality of service (QoS)

The level of service furnished by network to end users is known as quality of service. Since WSNs are used in
large number of areas which include military as well as civil applications, QoS is given considerable weightage in
situation of utmost importance.. The Sequential Assignment Routing protocol is the first QoS based protocol. Various
QoS issues in sensor networks are [5961]:
i. Topology management
ii. Bandwidth utilization
iii. Traffic management
iv. Scalability
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Application specific model designing
ii. Model for heterogeneous nodes
iii. Designing through middleware
iv. Protocol integration

4.16 Security
WSNs are usually deployed in harsh environments. Due to limitations on communication and computation
capabilities, sensor networks are more vulnerable to attacks. Hence, security in a WSN is very challenging issue.
Since the sensor networks are still a developing technology, designers makes their efforts in the development
and integration of security from initial phases of applications development. The security requirements to WSN
applications are [6264]:
i. Confidentiality
ii. Authentication
iii. Integrity
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iv. Key distribution methods

v. Message exchange methods
Open research area
The diverse research issues that are needed to be addressed are:
i. Designing routing protocols enabled with security features
ii. Development of secure data aggregation protocols
iii. Symmetric key cryptography
iv. Intrusion detection systems
v. Development of security systems for multimedia sensors

5. CONCLUSION
There are wide ranges of challenges in WSNs that are still need to be addressed. In this paper, we have identified a
ample list of issues associated with sensor networks. In this paper the critical survey has been performed to find out
the several design issues and active research area in accordance with the issue. Now days, WSNs make impact on our
day to day activities of life. So there are tremendous opportunities of research on the way in area of wireless sensor
networks.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge ministry of human resource and development (MHRD) for providing
financial support for this work under research scholars grant.

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