
sensor nodes for data dissemination, and cannot be
applied to data collection, which is the most
important traffic in WSN.
The main features of WSN are: Energy
consumption: Sensors have energy autonomy, and
they usually use tiny batteries as energy resources.
In most cases, WSNs are deployed in hard-to-reach
areas. This makes it difficult or almost impossible
to recharge or replace the batteries. This difficulty
leads us to deduce that the life time of a sensor is
essentially dependent on the battery. Therefore,
energy-consumption management is a major
constraint in this type of network. An intrinsic
characteristic of these sensors is their low storage
capacity. Although they also have a processor, the
sensors cannot perform very large operations due to
their relatively low processing power. For example,
“mote”-type sensor nodes are composed of an 8-bit
4 MHz microcontroller, 40 KB of memory, and a
radio with a bit rate of about 10 Kbps.
These remain true even for midrange nodes,
such as “UCLA/ROCKWELL’S WINS”, which
have a strong ARM 1100 processor with 1 MB flash
memory, 128 KB of RAM, and a 100 Kbps radio.
Quality is defined by the ability to interpret the
information collected by the sink. Even though the
QoS requirements vary according to the different
WSN applications, the two main measures of QoS
are data reliability and latency. Usually, a successful
data-exchange rate between the sensor nodes and the
sink must be above a certain threshold to ensure
network reliability and functionality. Reliability can
be further maximized, but this could be at the cost of
increased energy consumption. It is therefore
necessary to design robust and lightweight
algorithms for data encryption, authentication
mechanisms for privacy protection, and secure
routing for data relays to protect the entire network
against passive and active attacks, and denials of
external service providers.
2 Theoretical Foundation
The Architecture used in WSNs is commonly based
on five layers of the OSI Model. However,
Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is not suitable
for WSNs because of multi-hop communication.
Different layers used in WSNs are application,
transport, network, data link, and physical.
Additionally, the special functions of a WSN such as
power management, mobility management, and task
scheduling, to improve the effectiveness of the
network are generally managed by three cross layers
which are: Application layer: it supervises
movement and offers software for several usages
which transfer queries to obtain information.
Transport layer: this layer is usually essential for
internetwork communication. There have been
numerous protocols designed to offer consistency
and avoid congestion. Generally, because of multi-
hop communication, TCP is not appropriate for
WSNs. Network Layer: this layer provides a
function for routing which is a difficult mission in
WSNs. As a result of low energy and inadequate
memory, routing protocol has to provide consistent
and redundant paths, for which many protocols are
available according to the desired metric. To
guarantee consistency in case of hub failure,
redundant hubs are deployed which results in the
production of a lot of redundant information. The
information can be processed as a processing unit
that utilizes less energy co Data link layer: this
layer guarantees consistency from point-to-point or
point-to-multipoint. Error control and multiplexing
of information streams are also achieved in this
layer. In WSN, Medium Access Control (MAC) has
a significant part to play. It offers higher efficiency,
consistency, low delay, and higher rates of
transmission. Physical layer: this layer makes
available an interface to convey streams of
information over a physical medium. It also deals
with the choice of frequency, generation of a carrier
frequency for modulation, signal detection, and
security, [1]. Also the research in, [2], The
correctness of information has incredible impact on
the performance of the network.
2.1 Wireless Sensor Network Operating
Systems
LiteOS is a newly developed OS for wireless sensor
networks, which provides UNIX-like abstraction
and support for the C programming language.
Contiki is an OS that uses a simpler programming
style in C while providing advances such as
6LoWPAN and proto-threads, [3]. Clustering
Routing schemes are expected to make efforts to be
scalable given the vast collection of motes in WSNs.
WSNs should be able to talk back to the events
taking place in the environment effectively, [4]. The
number of sensor nodes deployed in the sensing area
may be on the order of hundreds, thousands, or
more. Any routing scheme must be able to work
with this huge number of sensor nodes. Because
there is no global addressing scheme like IP IP-
based network, the location of a sensor node in
WSN is estimated by calculating the signal strength
between two specific nodes. This technique will not
realize the coordinates of the neighboring node. The
realistic alternative is to use GPS (Global
Positioning System). Also, there is a need for
WSEAS TRANSACTIONS on COMMUNICATIONS
DOI: 10.37394/23204.2023.22.14
Adeniji Oluwashola David,
Azeez Bukola Akeem, Samuel Oladele Adeyemi