Wireless sensor and actuator networks (WS&ANs) are a new technology based on networks of small radio-enabled embedded devices that are being deployed in areas such as environmental monitoring, vehicle tracking, building management, body... more
Wireless sensor and actuator networks (WS&ANs) are a new technology based on networks of small radio-enabled embedded devices that are being deployed in areas such as environmental monitoring, vehicle tracking, building management, body monitoring and other applications. Power sources for network nodes are often limited, which imposes restrictions on hardware resources and their use by the underlying embedded software. We propose a new wireless sensor network architecture that is especially designed for the task of home automation. Our system relies on a low power WS&AN that employs energy harvesting techniques to maximize node lifetime and an embedded residential gateway that offers user interaction and secure connectivity to the outside world. The advantages of our system are its scalability, low power, self sufficiency and versatility.
Recently deployed Wireless Sensor Network systems (WSNs) are increasingly following heterogeneous designs, incorporating a mixture of elements with widely varying capabilities. The development and deployment of WSNs rides heavily on the... more
Recently deployed Wireless Sensor Network systems (WSNs) are increasingly following heterogeneous designs, incorporating a mixture of elements with widely varying capabilities. The development and deployment of WSNs rides heavily on the availability of simulation, emulation, visualization and analysis support. In this work, we develop tools specifically to support heterogeneous systems, as well as to support the measurement and visualization of operational systems that is critical to addressing the inevitable problems that crop up in deployment. Our system differs from related systems in three key ways: in its ability to simulate and emulate heterogeneous systems in their entirety, in its extensive support for integration and interoperability between Motes and Microservers, and in its unified
The GINSENG project develops performance-controlled wireless sensor networks that can be used for time-critical applications in hostile environments such as industrial plant automation and control. GINSENG aims at integrating wireless... more
The GINSENG project develops performance-controlled wireless sensor networks that can be used for time-critical applications in hostile environments such as industrial plant automation and control. GINSENG aims at integrating wireless sensor networks with existing enterprise resource management solutions using a middleware. A cornerstone is the evaluation in a challenging industrial environment - an oil refinery in Portugal. In this paper we first present our testbed. Then we introduce our solution to access, debug and flash the sensor nodes remotely from an operations room in the plant or from any location with internet access. We further present our experimental methodology and show some exemplary results from the refinery testbed.
