A review of micro-nano-scale wireless sensor networks for environmental protection: Prospects and challenges

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) play a significant role in environmental pollution control, for example, air pollution control. To become widely acceptable and commercially viable, miniaturization of WSN should be investigated. For this reason, CMOS implementation of sensors and their integration into WSN have drawn much research attention in recent times. In this paper, the suitability of WSN to be employed in environmental monitoring, protection and control has been judged especially from the viewpoint of available communication system standards and CMOS level architecture of sensors. The CMOS implementation of WSN for the two available competitive WSN technologies named ZigBee and Bluetooth has been mainly addressed. Finally, the prospects and challenges for Ultra Wideband (UWB) radios to be used in WSN and the contribution of recent developments of nanotechnology to WSN have been briefly discussed and are given more importance for probable exploitation in environment monitoring and pollution control.