Due to the rise in demand for wireless sensor networks in recent times, significant shift is observed from traditional, wired technologies to upcoming wireless technologies. Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at the highest rate due to increase in production activities in APAC, huge population base, and lucrative government policies. China is, in fact, the growth engine for automation in Asia-Pacific; in spite of lower levels of plant automation. India is also gaining market shares worldwide
The WSN consists of "nodes" – from a few to several hundreds or even thousands, where each node is connected to one (or sometimes several) sensor. Each such sensor network node has typically several parts: a radio transceiver with an internal antenna or connection to an external antenna, a microcontroller, an electronic circuit for interfacing with the sensors and an energy source, usually a battery or an embedded form of energy harvesting. A sensor node might vary in size from that of a shoebox down to the size of a grain of dust, although functioning "motes" of genuine microscopic dimensions are yet to be created. The cost of sensor nodes is similarly variable, ranging from a few to hundreds of dollars, depending on the complexity of the individual sensor nodes. Size and cost constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding constraints on resources such as energy, memory, computational speed, and communications