Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are made of spatially distributed sensors to monitor physical or environmental conditions; these sensors cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location. WSN system monitoring and controls are used in a variety of applications such as: railway security, transportation systems, agricultural monitoring, healthcare devices, etc. The cost of sensor nodes is variable depending on the complexity of the individual sensor nodes. Therefore, size and cost constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding constraints on resources such as energy, memory, computational speed, and communications bandwidth. Failures within these sensor nodes may occur due to signal disturbance, battery depletion, and/or excessive data transmissions. Therefore, a failure detection scheme, with low energy consumption, is needed to minimize the maintenance costs and maximize network performance.
The above-described background relating to WSN fault detection is merely intended to provide a contextual overview of some current technology, and is not intended to be exhaustive. Other context regarding the state of the art may become further apparent upon review of the following detailed description.