Abstract: The wireless sensor and actor networks(WSANs) derived from wireless sensor networks not only can sense the change of the environment, but also interact with it and perform appropriate actions. I}his paper reviewed the architecture, hardware structure, coordination mechanism between different nodes, and communication protocol of the WSANs. The survey of the recent researches on WSANs was given and future research directions of WSANs were raised in the last of the paper.

Key words: Wireless sensor and actor networks, Node design, Coordination mechanism, Communication protocol, Routing protocol, Transmission control