International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056 Volume: 06 Issue: 08 | Aug 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072 © 2019, IRJET | Impact Factor value: 7.34 | ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal | Page 710 Study of Wireless Sensor Network using a Matlab based Simulator Mohsin N. S. AlMaliki (1) Hasanain A.H. Al-Behadili (1) 1 Lecturers, University of Misan, Misan, Iraq ----------------------------------------------------------------------***--------------------------------------------------------------------- Abstract - Recently, there has been a noticeable interest in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) which is a group of devices called sensor nodes utilised for monitoring physical events such as moisture, temperature and else. In the future, there will be an increment in the usage of WSN for nowadays technologies, and therefore study of this kind of network will have crucial importance. There is also a need for a model that simulates the work of WSN to improve the performance of the network which the main objective of this study. In this paper, a very brief list of main challenges in WSN filed pointed out and a presentation of the future model has been investigated through simple examples. Key Words: (Wireless Sensor Networks, Routing, Simulation). 1. INTRODUCTION Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can be defined as a distribution of different equipment that has sensors. These sensors are used to achieve a monitoring process of a physical phenomenon such as temperature, humidity, motion ..etc. This is very useful for several purposes including safety, security and enhancements of services. The basic elements of any wireless sensor network comprising sensing points, processing unit and communication parts which are used to move the data to the user using specific protocols. The simple structure of the wireless sensor network is shown in figure1. Figure-1: Wireless Sensor Network structure The sensor node is a low cost and minimised power tool that has small size but it also has low processing units, a small amount of memory and limited power [1]. However, there are different modern filed that Wireless Sensor Network has been utilised like the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart cities. WSN differs from traditional networks, as it has different design and resource constraints, such the limitation of the processing and the storage for each node, the amount of energy is also limited, the ranges of short communication are short and with low bandwidth [2]. Wireless sensor networks have a large number of the nodes when it compared with the traditional Ad-hoc networks. As well as, the sensor nodes have a limited lifetime and the topology of the network may be changing continuously [2]. There are many topologies. The most used topologies are presented in [3]. Namely; star, mesh and hybrid which can be used in different scenarios depending on the application. There are also standards for WSN which are developed by several researchers. The IEEE 802.15.4 is the most important one and many other ones which were developed depending on the layer of work. A list of various Wireless Sensor nodes can be found in (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wireless_sensor_nod es). In this paper, a general study of WSN and an attempt to present the nowadays challenges of Wireless Sensor network. The main aim of this paper is to introduce a simulation software for Wireless Sensor Network can be used for several purposes. 2. General challenges in WSN As mentioned WSN employed for collecting information about the specific event without the need to human. A general survey of Wireless Sensor Network can be found in [4]. Wireless Sensor Network has several differences from the traditional networks. First and foremost is the deployment of WSN can be random or planned, and there is a cooperation between nodes in WSN to process each other information which makes them also different in network topology [4]. Routing protocols for WSN are also important to be studied for several reasons, mostly to get the protocol(s) that makes saver energy of nodes. The researchers in [5] point out that IP address is not applicable in WSN since it does not have IP addresses. There are several routing protocols for WSN such as Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) ...etc. , and most of the techniques for these can be found in [6]. There are also networking protocols such as Wireless HART [7] and ZigBee [8] and many others. There are similarities and differences among theses protocols and the use of any of them depends mostly on the application itself.