Current and future trends in sensor networks: a survey

Sensor networks consist of a large number of very small nodes that are deployed in some geographical area. The purpose of the network is to sense the environment and report what happens in the area it is deployed in. Sensor networks are used in many applications. In military applications they are used for surveillance and target tracking. In industrial applications, sensor networks are used in monitoring hazardous chemicals. They are also used in monitoring the environment and in early fire warning in forests as well as seismic data collections. Sensor networks face new challenges not known in cellular and ad-hoc wireless networks. In this paper, we report on currents and new trends in sensor networks. We also present some of the challenges and future work in sensor networks.