A Survey of Wireless Sensor Network Architectures

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors that cooperativelymonitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion,or pollutants, at different locations. Recent advances in low-power highly-integrated electronics,advances in micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), rapid growth in the type and quality of availablesensors, and progress in communication have allowed WSNs to achieve an unprecedented growth incommercial, industrial and military applications. In order to better understand WSNs, we look at theirnetwork architectures. In this survey, we classify existing WSN architectures into specific groups basedon WSN behaviour and data flow characteristics. Existing architectures are described and presentedalong with their advantages and disadvantages. The existing architectures are also evaluated in terms ofmost common WSN performance parameters such as network lifetime, latency, reliability, quality ofservice (QoS), fidelity, scalability, modularity, and ease of deployment.