A Wireless Sensor Network Project For Environmental Early Warning Has Been Completed

PRLog (Press Release) - Aug 06, 2009 -
WINSOC (Wireless Sensor Networks with Self Organization Capabilities) is a research project funded by the European Union through its Six Framework Program Information Society Technologies that has been completed in June 2009. The research deals with wireless sensor networks biologically inspired (mimicking processes found in biology) for early warning applications within critical and emergency scenarios. A sensor node prototype has been developed and validated in landslide and wildfire scenarios. This node satisfies different environmental requirements (temperature, humidity, salty fog, rain, sand and dust; shock, fall and vibrations; electromagnetic emissions) as the ones specified in many standards defined by ETSI, IEC and others.

A pilot version of the sensor network has been installed in India, in the region of Kerala, which includes 50 geologic sensors and 20 nodes; these sensors detect humidity and porosity of the terrain as well as the forces involved in terrain displacements and it is expected that the network will soon be expanded to 150 geologic sensors and approximately 25 nodes of wireless sensors that might be deployed in other locations prone to landslides and fires and also to industrial sites to monitor gas emission. Other experimental deployment has also been made in the Czech Republic to provide early warning for wildfires based on the detection and localization of heat and smoke sources — a computer simulator that emulates the spread of a fire through a forest has been implemented.

The novelty of the research done is that it delivers a wireless sensor network which is biologically inspired, that is, the design of the network mimics biology — in particular the rhythm of the heart, which is controlled by the interaction of several pacemaker cells, each of which can be seen as a pulse oscillator. Even though individual oscillators are not particularly stable or reliable, the heart as a whole is extremely stable and can readily adapt to changing conditions. Translating this model to the sensor network design means that the network is able to continue to function even when several sensors fail because sensor nodes communicate with their neighbours to arrive at a consensus on what has been sensed — the network then finds the best path through the available nodes to relay this information to the control centre. That is, the sensor nodes behave as biological entities that are able to make decisions on the basis of their local environments and their own individual states. This means self-organization capabilities that, in turn, deliver distributed detection and estimation mechanisms that are key to understand WSNs.

About wireless sensor networks.
In recent years, it has had a steep growth in research in the area of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) — these computer networks made up of tiny, low power and inexpensive autonomous devices (known as nodes and also as motes) deployed throughout a physical space that are able to sense, compute and wirelessly communicate.  Wireless sensor networks have important applications such as precision agriculture, monitoring within industrial automation, environmental monitoring and target tracking to name just a few. This has been enabled by creating sensors that are smaller, cheaper, and intelligent. The design of a WSN is strongly dependent on the application, and it must consider factors such as the environment, the application’s design objectives, costs, hardware, and system constraints. The potential of wireless sensors networks arises fundamentally from their ability to perform as self organizing, self healing, and self sustaining systems.
     
About WINSOC  
WINSOC (WIreless sensor Networks with Self-Organization Capabilities for critical and emergency applications) is a project funded by the European Union Sixth Framework Programme. The research started in September 2006 and has been completed in June 2009. Selex Communications (Italy) has coordinated the project (www.selex-comms.com). Other partners include the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy), the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Intracom Telecom (Greece), the Commissariat per l’Energie Atomique - LETI (France), the Czech Center for Science and Society (Czech Republic), Dune (Italy), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), the Indian Space Organization (India), Amrita University (India), and the scientific consultancy firm Sapienza Studies. Project website www.winsoc.org.