Lifetime Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Senor Networks (WSN) are coming of in age and are being installed in many applications. Some of the common monitoring applications are seismic, volcano eruption, tsunami, structural, intruder detection, health, habitat etc. Most of these applications of WSN are event driven wherein the system should be able to sense an occurrence of an event at an unknown future instant of time when it occurs. If the WSN system fails to detect the event at the time of occurrence the entire deployment of WSN fails to achieve its purpose. WSN has a specified life time and therefore in order to continue the operation of monitoring; it is essential to know the operational life period of WSN system. Knowledge of this will help in scheduling and planning the required redeployment. WSNs are highly resource constrained systems and most of the research in the WSN has been carried out to improve the performance under high resource constraints. The estimation of useful life of Wireless Sensor Network can be carried out by preparing a fault model of the WSN system. The system fault model can be used to predict the system survivability. The paper discuses the WSN fault model.