Introduction to wireles sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks have gained a lot of attention lately. Due to technological advances, building small-sized, energy-efficient reliable devices, capable of communicating with each other and organizing themselves in ad hoc networks have become possible. These devices have brought a new perspective to the world of computers as we know it: they can be embedded into the environment in such a way that the user is unaware of them. There is no need for reconfiguration and maintenance as the network organizes itself to inform the users of the most relevant events detected or to assist them in their activity.
This chapter will give a brief overview of the whole area, by introducing the wireless sensor networks concepts to the reader. Then, a number of applications aswell as possible typical scenarioswill be presented in order to better understand the field of application of this new emerging technology. Up to this moment, several main areas of applications have been identified. New areas of applications are still to be discovered as the research and products grow more mature.
Wireless sensor networks bring lots of challenges and often contradictory demands from the design point of view. The last part of the chapter will be dedicated to highlighting the main directions of research involved in this field. It will serve as a brief introduction to the problems to be described in the following chapters of the book.