Wireless sensor network design for tactical military applications : Remote large-scale environments

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be used by the military for a number of purposes such as monitoring or tracking the enemies and force protection. Unlike commercial WSNs, a tactical military sensor network has different priority requirements for military usage. Especially in the remote large-scale network, topology, self-configuration, network connectivity, maintenance, and energy consumption are the challenges. In this paper, we present an overview of application scenarios in remote large-scale WSNs focusing on the primary requirements for tactical environments. We propose a sensor network architecture based on the cluster-tree based multi-hop model with optimized cluster head election and the corresponding node design method to meet the tactical requirements. With the proposed WSN architecture, one can easily design the sensor network for military usage in remote large scale environments.