Considerations in low power wireless sensor networks

The wireless sensor networks (WSN) technology is becoming increasingly attractive for a wide range of real-world applications, mostly due to their shrinking size and cost, while demonstrating improved performances and functionalities. There is another critical factor that affects the operation of WSN, which is the power consumption of the nodes and their battery life. This paper highlights the important IEEE 802 based standards, such as ZigBee and Bluetooth 4.0+ protocols. Cost-effective and reliable systems can be implemented with the help of these protocols by considering proper software architectures. Tiny OS and FreeRTOS are open source operating-system software available for embedded applications. The OS can be integrated with drivers and software stack to achieve full functionality and offer software solutions for sensor networks applications. There are various development platforms that are available to develop low power sensor networks and nodes. While considering sensor platforms and their applications, the power consumption is one of the important factors to take into consideration. This paper provides a survey as well as an overview of the low power WSN and example hardware platforms.