Wireless sensor networks(WSNs) are different to traditional networks and are highly dependent on applications, thus traditional routing protocols cannot be applied efficiently to the networks. As the variability of both the application and the network architecture, the majority of the attention, therefore, has been given to the routing protocols. This work surveys and evaluates state-of-the-art routing protocols based on many factors including energy efficiency, delay andcomplexity, and presents several classifications for the various approaches pursued. Additionally, more attention is paid to several routing protocols and their advantages and disadvantages and, indeed, this work implements two of selected protocols, LEACH and THVRG, on the OPNET, and compares them in many aspects based on a large amount of experimental data. The survey also provides a valuable framework for comparing new and existing routing protocols. According to the evaluation for the performance of the routing protocols, this thesis provides assistance in relation to further improving the performance in relation to routing protocols. Finally, future research strategies and trends in relation to routing technology in wireless sensor networks are also provided.

An achievable rate region for general wireless sensor networks is proposed. A general multi-source, multi-relay, multi-destination wireless sensor network with arbitrarily correlated sources is considered. Each node can sense some real phenomena and send its readings to one or more sinks (data gathering nodes) via some relays. It also can relay some correlated or independent readings of other nodes, simultaneously. In this problem the source and channel coding separation is not optimal and the information which each reading has about others nodes is destroyed in separation. Thus, a joint source channel coding scheme can be used. The problem consists of relay channels and multiple access channels with arbitrarily correlated sources. The proposed scheme is based on regular block Markov encoding/backward decoding and code division multiple-access (CDMA) and the result is a combination of multi-relay and multiple-access with correlated sources.

Exploitation of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in ubiquitous computing environments is continuously increasing for gathering data. Contemporary distributed software systems on WSNs for pragmatic business applications have become extremely adaptive, dynamic, heterogeneous and large scaled. Management of such system is not trivial to fulfil these features, leading to more and more complex management and configuration. Along with encompassing state of art and novel techniques for such diversely dynamic system, in this thesis two alternative techniques namely “task initiation by command” and “run-time task deployment and processing” are compared, for such system’s setup and configuration. Both techniques have their own pros and cons which makes them suitable according to the requirements and contextual situations. A lot of effort has been put to make WSNs more and more efficient in terms of computations and power consumption. Hence comparative analysis of both techniques used in this report to setup and configure WSN can be a benchmark to lead towards most appropriate solution to compensate the need of efficient energy and resource consumption.Both alternative schemes are implemented to setup WSN on Sun Microsystems sunSPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) sensor nodes which are embedded microcontrollers and programmed them in java (j2me). It performs radio communication between wireless sensors and host via sink node also called base station, along with over the air run-time management of sensors. SunSPOTs built in libraries and KSN libraries are used to implement these alternatives and compare the memory footprint, communication pattern and energy consumption.Exploitation of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in ubiquitous computing environments is continuously increasing for gathering data. Contemporary distributed software systems on WSNs for pragmatic business applications have become extremely adaptive, dynamic, heterogeneous and large scaled. Management of such system is not trivial to fulfil these features, leading to more and more complex management and configuration. Along with encompassing state of art and novel techniques for such diversely dynamic system, in this thesis two alternative techniques namely “task initiation by command” and “run-time task deployment and processing” are compared, for such system’s setup and configuration. Both techniques have their own pros and cons which makes them suitable according to the requirements and contextual situations. A lot of effort has been put to make WSNs more and more efficient in terms of computations and power consumption. Hence comparative analysis of both techniques used in this report to setup and configure WSN can be a benchmark to lead towards most appropriate solution to compensate the need of efficient energy and resource consumption.Both alternative schemes are implemented to setup WSN on Sun Microsystems sunSPOT (Small Programmable Object Technology) sensor nodes which are embedded microcontrollers and programmed them in java (j2me). It performs radio communication between wireless sensors and host via sink node also called base station, along with over the air run-time management of sensors. SunSPOTs built in libraries and KSN libraries are used to implement these alternatives and compare the memory footprint, communication pattern and energy consumption.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is an electronic labeling technique.These electronic labels are called tags and read wirelessly. In this thesis a battery and amicroprocessor are connected to the tag. The work consisted of programming themicroprocessor to transfers sensor data into the tags memory. The tags are placed ontrains and data is collected from sensors at the train's axle. That way sensor data can betransmitted from a train to readers stationed along the railroad tracks.The aim of the project is to predict service intervals. There is currently no possibility tosee wear in real time and stop a train before it breaks. At present, there is a form of heatdetectors located along the railroad tracks to measure temperatures of wheels and axlesof passing trains. These are expensive and have the disadvantage of being able to detecterrors that have already occurred, they can not detect errors that do not radiate heat.The thesis aims to provide a solution for this. By programming a microprocessor totransmit sensor data to the tags memory it is possible for an RFID reader to read thesensor data from the tag. Ensuring that data and identity can be read from the tag atspeeds up to 250 km/h, you can get the status of a trains wagon before it breaks.

In recent years, the development of wireless sensor networks has made a great progress. Early projects focused on replacement of existing systems equipped with wires. These systems started out as simple static data collection networks with one smart central node that could decide further actions based on the content of the collected data. Through time, the intelligence has become more decentralized, which means the nodes now can cooperate in a more efficient and dynamic manner. The task given is to evaluate TinyOS and NesC on specific hardware from Crossbow Technology Inc, applied on an application called the Open Secure Office Project. This application is designed to enhance the security without negative effects on comfort in a frequently visited open-plan office. Finally, a real world system demonstration should be performed. We propose a solution where there is no urgent need to cover the entire office area with radio signals to maintain a secure sensor system. This is true as long as all entries and exits to the office area are “guarded” by some base station which has as main task to keep track of people and equipment entering or leaving the office. Small scale tests have been performed which show that it is possible to easily develop and maintain a wireless sensor network security system, that could be coordinated by alternative systems.

Wireless sensor networks offer easy implementation, flexibility and mobility of hand held devices. Sensors consist of an internal power source, which is the great limitation for the life time and the usage of sensor networks. To increase the life time, sensors should stay in energy saving sleep mode as long as possible, because in sleep mode the radio is either shut down or working with less energy. Better energy handling is implemented in different power saving mechanism of common Medium Access Control protocols, which are evaluated and analyzed and further extensions and ideas to improve the energy efficiency are presented. Slotted PSM is simulated with the NS2 and compared to the WLAN 802.11 PSM technology and the results show that energy efficiency and power consumption are much better implemented and life time increases with the use of Slotted PSM.

An achievable rate region for general wireless sensor networks is proposed. A general multi-source, multi-relay, multi-destination wireless sensor network with arbitrarily correlated sources is considered. Each node can sense some real phenomena and send its readings to one or more sinks (data gathering nodes) via some relays. It also can relay some correlated or independent readings of other nodes, simultaneously. In this problem the source and channel coding separation is not optimal and the information which each reading has about others nodes is destroyed in separation. Thus, a joint source channel coding scheme can be used. The problem consists of relay channels and multiple access channels with arbitrarily correlated sources. The proposed scheme is based on regular block Markov encoding/backward decoding and code division multiple-access (CDMA) and the result is a combination of multi-relay and multiple-access with correlated sources.

With the advances of wireless communications and micro-electronic device technologies, wireless sensor networks have been applied in a wide spectrum of applications, including one of the killer applications--object tracking. Among numerous challenges in object tracking, one of the important issues is the energy management. One solution to the above issue is the mobile agent-based paradigm. Using the mobile agent in wireless sensor networks has many advantages over the client/server paradigm in terms of energy consumptions, networks band-width, etc. In this thesis, we adopt the mobile agent-based paradigm to support object track-ing in wireless sensor networks. Although using the mobile agents for object tracking can improve the overall perfor-mance, the hurdle is the determination of the mobile agent itinerary. The past studies on ob-ject tracking considered the object¡¦s movement behavior as randomness or the direction and the speed of the object remain constant for a certain period of time. However, in most real-world cases, the object movement behavior is often based on certain underlying events rather than randomness complete. With this assumption, the movements of objects are some-times predictable. Through the prediction, the mobile agent can determine which node to mi-grate in order to reduce energy consumption and increase the performance of object tracking. In this thesis, we develop a mining-based approach to discover the useful patterns from the object¡¦s movement behavior. This approach utilizes the discovered rules to choose the sensor node the mobile agent needs to migrate in order to reduce the number of wrong migration, to reduce total energy consumed by sensor nodes, and to prolong the lifetime of the wireless sensor network. Experimental results show the efficiency of the proposed approach.

Hundred and thousands of wireless sensor node comprise wireless sensor network (WSN), WSN can be applied in many situations, because a wireless sensor node have small size and wireless transmission advantages, the battery provide sensor node power, but the battery¡¦s power is limit, therefore, energy efficiency is a critical issue, routing protocol can make better energy consumption and loading balance, Clustering is useful routing protocol in WSN and provides the direction of energy efficiency. The ARC (Adaptive Re-Clustering) is based on clustering; ARC can reduce the whole WSN power consumption and protect less residue power cluster-head. The experiments prove that ARC can improve network reliability and extend network lifetime.

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has become a popular wireless technology in recent years. In WSN, a large number of sensors are used to collect data and forward data hop-by-hop to a sink. Due to the unbalancing of traffic load, some grid nodes may consume more energy and their packet loss ratio may be increased as well. In order to improve above-mentioned shortcomings, in this Thesis, we propose an Adaptive Grid-based Data Collection (AGDC) scheme. Because a mobile sink may move, it is possible the traffic load of primary grid nodes can be changed in WSN. According to the distribution of traffic load, the AGDC can adjust transmission range to allocate one or more temporary grid nodes between two primary grid nodes. Through the added temporary grid nodes, traffic load is evenly dispersed among different grid nodes. We allow the primary grid nodes to use smaller transmission power to save energy and allow the temporary grid nodes to buffer data to reduce packet loss ratio. For the purpose of evaluation, we perform simulation on NS-2. With the proposed AGDC scheme, the transmission range of a primary grid node can be set to an appropriate distance to reduce power consumption and packet loss ratio. Since the packet loss ratio is reduced, the throughput of entire WSN is increased.