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"Specialized
elements of hardware and software, connected by
wires, radio waves and infrared, will be so ubiquitous
that no one will notice their presence".
Mark Weiser
Father of Ubiquitous Computing
Recent advances
in embedded systems and mobile technologies are
paving the way for the next revolution in computing,
Ubiquitous Computing, the future towards which
all the current technological developments are
heading. The technology trends across the globe
are pointing in this direction to make intelligent
devices, all pervasive, and effectively invisible
to the user.
As the field
of communication networks continues to evolve,
a very interesting and challenging area of Wireless
Sensor Networks (WSN) is rapidly coming of age.
The emergence of WSN has enabled new classes of
applications that benefit a large number of fields
including health, agriculture, geology, retail,
military, home, and emergency management.
A WSN consists
of a large number of sensor nodes, termed as motes
that may be randomly and densely deployed. These
motes are small electronic components capable
of sensing many types of information from the
environment including temperature, light, humidity,
radiation, the presence or nature of biological
organisms, geological features, seismic vibrations,
and specific types of computer data. The individual
devices in a WSN are inherently resource constrained
with limited processing speed, storage capacity,
and communication bandwidth. These devices have
substantial processing capability in the aggregate,
but not individually. So we must combine their
many vantage points on the physical phenomena
within the network itself.
Sensor networks
research and development derive many concepts
and protocols from distributed computer networks
such as the Internet. However, several technical
challenges in sensor networks need to be addressed
due to the specialized nature of the sensors and
the fact that many sensor network applications
may involve remote mobile sensors with limited
power sources that must dynamically adapt to their
environment.
The development
of sensor networks requires technologies from
three different research areas: sensing, communication,
and computing (including hardware, software, and
algorithms). Thus, combined and separate advancements
in each of these areas have driven research in
sensor networks. Available computing capacity
becomes exponentially smaller and cheaper with
each passing year. Researchers can use the semiconductor
manufacturing techniques that underlie this miniaturization
to build radios and exceptionally small mechanical
structures (MEMS) that sense fields and forces
in the physical world. These inexpensive, low-power
communication devices can be deployed throughout
a physical space, providing dense sensing close
to physical phenomena, processing and communicating
this information, and coordinating actions with
other nodes. Combining these capabilities with
the system software technology that forms the
Internet makes it possible to instrument the world
with increasing fidelity.
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