TY - JOUR A2 - Honeine, Paul AU - Kim, Beom-Su AU - Park, HoSung AU - Kim, Kyong Hoon AU - Godfrey, Daniel AU - Kim, Ki-Il PY - 2017 DA - 2017/10/31 TI - A Survey on Real-Time Communications in Wireless Sensor Networks SP - 1864847 VL - 2017 AB - Generally, various traffic requirements in wireless sensor network are mostly dependent on specific application types, that is, event-driven, continuous, and query-driven types. In these applications, real-time delivery is one of the important research challenges. However, due to harsh networking environment around a node, many researchers usually take different approach from conventional networks. In order to discuss and analyze the advantage or disadvantage of these approaches, some comprehensive survey literatures were published; however they are either out of date or compiled for communication protocols on single layer. Based on this deficiency, in this paper, we present the up-to-date research approaches and discuss the important features related to real-time communications in wireless sensor networks. As for grouping, we categorize the approaches into hard, soft, and firm real-time model. Furthermore, in all these categories, research has been focused on MAC and scheduling and routing according to research area or objective in second level. Finally, the article also suggests potential directions for future research in the field. SN - 1530-8669 UR - https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/1864847 DO - 10.1155/2017/1864847 JF - Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing PB - Hindawi KW - ER -