Traffic Engineering Models in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are new category of wireless networks that are

gaining importance in large number in civilian and military applications. WSN is a

distributed and autonomous sensor device used for monitoring physical or environmental

conditions. Sensor nodes are part of WSNs and are tiny in size. They are connected and communicate with each other to exchange

data and information. These nodes are capable of sensing temperature, humidity,

pollution level in environment, atmospheric pressure and transfer these information

to a base station (BS) which is also termed as sink. Some of the applications include

weather monitoring, movement of vehicles in highways, movement of wild animals in

forest, battlefield surveillance and industrial applications. Nodes in the network

communicate among themselves through wireless medium and the same medium is

used to transfer data from sensor nodes to sink. Sensors are equipped with battery

as source of energy which gets drained quickly and in many situations they are not

replaceable. Therefore, there is a need to design protocols for different layers which

are energy aware. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the techniques, issues,

challenges and applications of WSN.