Wireless Sensor Network

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are becoming common in use, with a vast diversity of applications. Due to its resource constraints, it is hard to maintain Quality of Service (QoS) with WSNs. Though they contain a vast variety of applications, at the same time they are also required to provide different levels of QoS, for various types of applications. A number of different issues and challenges still persist ahead to maintain the QoS of WSN, especially in critical applications where the accuracy of timely, guaranteed data transfer is required, such as chemical, defense, and healthcare. Hence, QoS is required to ensure the best use of sensor nodes at any time. Researchers are trying to focus on QoS issues and challenges to get maximum benefit from their applications. With this chapter, the authors focus on operational and architectural challenges of handling QoS, requirements of QoS in WSNs, and they discuss a selected survey of QoS aware routing techniques by comparing them in WSNs. Finally, the authors highlight a few open issues and future directions of research for providing QoS in WSNs.