Wireless Sensor Networks in Brief:
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can be referred to as a collection of spatially spread and dedicated sensors that have the tendency to monitor and record the physical conditions of its surroundings; thus, organizing the collected data to a central location. Environmental conditions are measured. The WSN node equipment includes a radio transceiver attached with an antenna, a microcontroller, an interfacing electronic circuit, and an energy source, usually a battery. WSN nodes consist of four fundamental components. This includes a sensing unit, a processing unit, a radio transceiver and a power unit. There are also additional components in the network that includes location finding systems, mobilizers and power generators. Sensing units comprises – sensors, analogue-to-digital converters (ADCs) and sometimes a mobilizer is needed to move sensor nodes when required to carry out a specific task. The processing unit receives digitise signals that was measured by the sensors, and in turn uses its associated storage capacity to manage the rest of the tasks in the network. The connection between the node and the network is done by the radio transceiver which also serves as the communication medium of the clusterhead. The power unit is an important part of the component since as we shall discover later in this report, it determines the longevity of the sensor node. This latter component is one of the essential resource constraints of WSN nodes. Several industries such as automobile, oil and gas, textile etc are leaning towards the benefit of WSN. The current market projection for Wireless Sensor Networks is estimated to reach US$1.75 Billion by 2019
You can watch how Crossbow demonstrate how wireless sensor network works