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From Labs to Real Environments: The Dark Side of WSNs

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Recent Advances in Sensing Technology

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 49))

Abstract

Distributed environmental monitoring with wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is one of the most challenging research activities faced by the embedded system community in the last decade. Here, the need for pervasive, reliable and accurate monitoring systems has pushed the research to address aspects related to the realization of credible deployments able to survive in harsh environments for long time and not only toy applications working in laboratories. Designing an effective WSN requires a good piece of engineer work, not to mention the research contribution needed to provide a credible deployment. As a matter of fact, to solve our application, we are looking for a monitoring framework scalable, adaptive with respect to topological changes in the network, intelligent in its ability to react to evolutions in the external environment, power-aware in its middleware components and endowed with energy harvesting mechanisms to grant a long lifetime for the network. The paper addresses all main aspects related to the design of a WSN ranging from the possible- need of an ad-hoc embedded system, to sensing, local and remote transmission, data storage and visualization. Two applications, namely monitoring the marine environment and forecasting the collapse of rock faces in mountaineering areas will be the experimental leitmotiv of the chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

    C. Alippi, C. Camplani, C. Galperti & M. Roveri

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  1. C. Alippi
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  2. C. Camplani
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  3. C. Galperti
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  4. M. Roveri
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  1. School of Engineering and Advanced Technology (SEAT), Massey University (Turitea Campus), Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Subhas Chandra Mukhopadhyay  & Gourab Sen Gupta  & 

  2. Professor and Dept. Chair, Dept. of Engineering Science, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

    Ray Yueh-Min Huang

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Alippi, C., Camplani, C., Galperti, C., Roveri, M. (2009). From Labs to Real Environments: The Dark Side of WSNs. In: Mukhopadhyay, S.C., Gupta, G.S., Huang, R.YM. (eds) Recent Advances in Sensing Technology. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 49. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00578-7_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00578-7_9

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