A wireless sensor network may comprise thousands of sensor nodes. Each sensor node has a sensing

capability as well as limited energy supply, compute power, memory and communication ability. Besides military applications, wireless sensor networks may be used to monitor microclimates and wildlife habitats [56], the structural integrity of bridges and buildings, building security, location of valuable assets (via sensors placed on these valuable assets), traffic, and so on. However, realizing the full potential of wireless sensor networks poses myriad research challenges ranging from hardware and architectural issues, to programming languages and operating systems for sensor networks, to security concerns, to algorithms for sensor network deployment, operation and management. Iyengar and Brooks [26, 27] and Culler and Hong [12] provide good overviews of the breadth of sensor network research topics as well as of applications for sensor networks.