Wireless sensor networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) also referred to as a Sensornet, is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, oscillation|vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations. Their origination has been traced back to military purposes like battlefield mapping and surveillance. They have evolved to commercial, industrial and scientific applications as well. These purposes include ecosystem monitoring, healthcare applications and traffic monitoring.

Wireless sensor networks use spatially distributed devices and an ad-hoc network meaning that each sensor supports a multi-hop routing algorithm (several nodes may forward data packets to the base station. Wikipedia.