Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

The sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks may be deployed in unattended and possibly hostile environments. The ill-disposed environment affects the monitoring infrastructure that includes the sensor nodes and the network. In addition, node failures and environmental hazards cause frequent topology changes, communication failures, and network partitioning. This in turn adds a new dimension to the fragility of the network topology. Such perturbations are far more common than those found in conventional wireless networks thus, demand efficient techniques for discovering disruptive behavior in such networks. Traditional fault diagnosis techniques devised for multiprocessor systems are not directly applicable to wireless sensor networks due to their specific requirements and limitations. This survey integrates research efforts that have been produced in fault diagnosis specifically for wireless sensor networks. The survey aims at clarifying and uncovering the potential of this technology by providing the technique-based taxonomy. The fault diagnosis techniques are classified based on the nature of the tests, correlation between sensor readings and characteristics of sensor nodes and the network.