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Wireless Sensor Networks

21.Sep.2008

In this school year, I’ll be involved in a research project on the Research Centre of my University Department. The research project is funded by the European Union and it’s called GISENG. The project is focused on Wireless Sensor Networks, which are basically networks made of (usually small) nodes with no wire connection at all (including no power source) and that use wireless devices in order to communicate with each other. The nodes are usually packed with sensors, hence the name, of various types: temperature, pressure, humidity, and whatever you can think of. Their wireless capabilities enable them to be used in several situations where normal device networks wouldn’t work so effectively or at all: highly restricted factory environments, fire detection in wide and outdoor areas, systems embedded in movable objects and so on.

A Wireless Sensor Network representation

One of the main challenges in this area is coping with the low battery requirements, since the nodes should work as independently as possible for the longest amount of time. The scalability of the networks is also an issue: sometimes thousands of nodes are in use. And being the communication wireless, there’s also communication issues: sometimes nodes won’t be able to communicate with neighbours. High flexibility is therefore also a requirement.

The most fascinating prospect of this area of study is what it’s called Smart Dust. Nodes as small as grains of sand or event dust, that have sensing, controlling and communication abilities.

The University of Berkeley are powering this ideas with their work on the miniaturization of nodes. You can see here some examples of what they made so far. They’re already working with sizes smaller than 1 centimetre.

We’ll be working on another side of the issue: information processing with energy optimization concerns. Building simulators of the nodes features and of the network per se, creating energy optimization algorithms and finally helping on the deployment of an actual wireless sensor network. As you can see, we have some interesting tasks ahead and I’m looking forward to them.

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