On lifetime-oriented device provisioning in heterogeneous wireless sensor networks: approaches and challenges

With the promise of being a revolutionary innovation for ubiquitous surveillance and monitoring, wireless sensor networks have attracted increasing interest from both academia and industry. One of the critical challenges facing successful WSN implementation is limited lifetime, which is imposed by the limited power supply of non-replenishable batteries on devices. In this article we concentrate on the impact of device provisioning on the usable system lifetime. We introduce a device provisioning framework based on hierarchical communication architecture. The device provisioning strategies are classified into two groups based on the application scenarios: deterministic and random. We investigate and compare the latest approaches for deterministic and random device provisioning. We also discuss open issues in each category.