Deployment of sensors: An overview

A distributed sensor network (DSN) is a collection of a large number of heterogeneous intelligent sensors distributed logically, spatially, or geographically over an environment and connected through a high-speed network. The sensors may be cameras as vision sensors, microphones as audio sensors, ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, humidity sensors, light sensors, temperature sensors, pressure/force sensors, vibration sensors, radioactivity sensors, seismic sensors, etc. The sensors continuously monitor and collect measurements of respective data from their environment. The collected data are processed by an associated processing element that then transmits it through an interconnected communication network. The information that is gathered from all parts of the sensor network is then integrated using some data-fusion strategy. This integrated information is then useful to derive appropriate inferences about the environment where the sensors are deployed.