Posts filed under 'Sensor Network Papers'
http://www.citeulike.org/user/scottr/article/482187
A very cool little paper, talking about the possibility of “smart dust”, essentially a sensor network on an even smaller scale. The main thrust of this paper is using optical techniques to transmit data between dust “motes” and a base station. The base station emits light that the motes detect and reflect back, modulating the light to transmit the data - this way most of the energy to transmit the data is coming from the base station, in the form of the original light wave, and is simply modulated and reflected back, at very little cost to the dust mote. It also allows for “space division multiplexing”, as the base station can receive reflected data back from any number of dust motes up to the resolution of the camera being used.
February 1st, 2006
http://www.citeulike.org/user/scottr/article/482190
A really good paper on interest and data dissemination in sensor networks. Describes the “directed diffusion” paradigm, where “interests” are diffused throughout the network, and paths are “reinforced” to create gradients back to the data sinks. All communication is local, so nodes have no knowledge of the network topology. Unique addresses aren’t needed in the network, but nodes must be able to distinguish neighbours somehow. There’s probably quite a bit of work that could be done in diffusion based networks, such as development of a MAC layer protocol specifically designed for diffusion applications, however, seeing as the paper is from 2000, there’s probably already been work done, so I’ll have a good look around.
February 1st, 2006
Jason Hill, Robert Szewczyk, Alec Woo, Seth Hollar, David Culler, Kristofer Pister. ASPLOS 2000
http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/sensor/papers/tos.pdf
This paper describes the TinyOS system, a multithreaded operating system for network sensors. TinyOS runs in 178 bytes of memory and supports two levels of scheduling. The paper discusses a system architecture for network sensors, from the hardware level through to the application level. A good “real-world” application of sensor principles.
January 20th, 2006
http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/sensor/papers/mobicom-00.pdf
David Steere, Antonio Baptista, Dylan McNamee, Calton Pu, Jonathan Walpole, Proceedings of MOBICOMM 2000, pages 292-299
This paper describes an Environmental Observation and Forcasting System (EOFS), CORIE. CORIE is a network of sensors in the Columbia river that monitors salinity, flow, etc. However, it is not a sensor network as such, and this paper is a “call for help” to the sensor network research community. Each node in the network is manually configured (!), runs a full 586 in a box (!), and communicates via a 900 MHz radio link using TCP (!). Routing is completely static in this multi-hop network and some of the nodes that act as repeaters are battery powered (!). This paper describes a situation that would be suitable for a low-power wireless sensor network, and describes the challenges involved in operating the EOFS as a traditional network. One good quote:
Reconfiguring the network in response to a station failure is as expensive as replacing the failing unit
Overall, this paper is more an example of why we should be developing sensor network technology, rather than how.
January 19th, 2006
http://www.wand.net.nz/~smr26/sensor/papers/Estrin99e.pdf
Deborah Estrin, Ramesh Govindan, John Heidemann, Satis Kumar, Proceedings of MOBICOMM 1999, pages 263-270.
This is an introductory paper on some of the key concepts of sensor networking. It discusses the need for sensor networks to be treated differently from existing networks, in terms of addressing, binding, routing, etc. It proposes that nodes in a sensor network need not be directly addressable, however they should have some way of knowing where they are, at least. Sensor networks are data-centric, and application-specific, and as such coordination of the network should be distributed and make use of localised algorithms for clustering nodes. It discusses the topic of directed-diffusion as a way for the network to diffuse queries and return results.
January 19th, 2006