Semantization Improves the Energy Efficiency of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks(WSNs) have been increasingly available for large-scale applications in which energy efficiency is an important performance measure. These applications include environmental monitoring and structure monitoring which demand multifarious data. Driven by the energy limitation nature of WSNs lots of research works have been done in aspects such as nodes deployment, routing protocol, topology control, data reduction, sleep scheduling, etc. However, heterogeneous, i.e. hybrid sensor nodes are combined together into semantic sensor networks to provide large-scale applications with content rich information. In this paper, we discuss the potential of energy efficiency that semantization could bring to sensor networks. First we have an overview of some related work and then address current approaches of energy conservation in WSNs as well as how semantization can contribute in each aspect of saving energy. Finally a recommendatory architecture of semantic sensor network is proposed. Semantization will be a promising solution to improve energy efficiency together with system performance.