Enhancing Mobility in Low Power Wireless Sensor Networks

In the early stages of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), low data rate traffic patterns are assumed as applications have a single purpose with simple sensing task and data packets are generated at a rate of minutes or hours. As such, most of the proposed communication protocols focus on energy efficiency rather than high throughput. Emerging high data rate applications motivate bulk data transfer protocols to achieve high throughput. The basic idea is to enable nodes to transmit a sequence of packets in burst once they obtain a medium. However, due to the low-power, low-cost nature, the transceiver used in wireless sensor networks is prone to packet loss. Especially when the transmitters are mobile, packet loss becomes worse. To reduce the energy expenditure caused by packet loss and retransmission, a burst transmission scheme is required that can adapt to the link dynamics and estimate the number of packets to transmit in burst. As the mobile node is moving within the network, it cannot always maintain a stable link with one specific stationary node. When link deterioration is constantly detected, the mobile node has to initiate a handover process to seamlessly transfer the communication to a new relay node before the current link breaks. For this reason, it is vital for a mobile node to (1) determine whether a fluctuation in link quality eventually results in a disconnection, (2) foresee potential disconnection well ahead of time and establish an alternative link before the disconnection occurs, and (3) seamlessly transfer communication to the new link. In this dissertation, we focus on dealing with burst transmission and handover issues in low power mobile wireless sensor networks. To this end, we begin with designing a novel mobility enabled testing framework as the evaluation testbed for all our remaining studies. We then perform an empirical study to investigate the link characteristics in mobile environments. Using these observations as guidelines, we propose three algorithms related to mobility that will improve network performance in terms of latency and throughput: i) Mobility Enabled Testing Framework (MobiLab). Considering the high fluctuation of link quality during mobility, protocols supporting mobile wireless sensor nodes should be rigorously tested to ensure that they produce predictable outcomes before actual deployment. Furthermore, considering the typical size of wireless sensor networks and the number of parameters that can be configured or tuned, conducting repeated and reproducible experiments can be both time consuming and costly. The conventional method for evaluating the performance of different protocols and algorithms under different network configurations is to change the source code and reprogram the testbed, which requires considerable effort. To this end, we present a mobility enabled testbed for carrying out repeated and reproducible experiments, independent of the application or protocol types which should be tested. The testbed consists of, among others, a server side control station and a client side traffic ow controller which coordinates inter- and intra-experiment activities. ii) Adaptive Burst Transmission Scheme for Dynamic Environment. Emerging high data rate applications motivate bulk data transfer protocol to achieve high throughput. The basic idea is to enable nodes to transmit a sequence of packets in burst once they obtain a medium. Due to the low-power and low-cost nature, the transceiver used in wireless sensor networks is prone to packet loss. When the transmitter is mobile, packet loss becomes even worse. The existing bulk data transfer protocols are not energy efficient since they keep their radios on even while a large number of consecutive packet losses occur. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptive burst transmission scheme (ABTS). In the design of the ABTS, we estimate the expected duration in which the quality of a specific link remains stable using the conditional distribution function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of received acknowledgment packets. We exploit the expected duration to determine the number of packets to transmit in burst and the duration of the sleeping period. iii) Kalman Filter Based Handover Triggering Algorithm (KMF). Maintaining a stable link in mobile wireless sensor network is challenging. In the design of the KMF, we utilized combined link quality metrics in physical and link layers, such as Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and packet success rate (PSR), to estimate link quality fluctuation online. Then Kalman filter is adopted to predict link dynamics ahead of time. If a predicted link quality fulfills handover trigger criterion, a handover process will be initiated to discover alternative relay nodes and establish a new link before the disconnection occurs. iv) Mobile Sender Initiated MAC Protocol (MSI-MAC). In cellular networks, mobile stations are always associated with the nearest base station through intra- and inter-cellular handover. The underlying process is that the quality of an established link is continually evaluated and handover decisions are made by resource rich base stations. In wireless sensor networks, should a seamless handover be carried out, the task has to be accomplished by energy-constraint, resource-limited, and low-power wireless sensor nodes in a distributed manner. To this end, we present MSI-MAC, a mobile sender initiated MAC protocol to enable seamless handover

Enhancing Mobility in Low Power Wireless Sensor Networks

In the early stages of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), low data rate traffic patterns are assumed as applications have a single purpose with simple sensing task and data packets are generated at a rate of minutes or hours. As such, most of the proposed communication protocols focus on energy efficiency rather than high throughput. Emerging high data rate applications motivate bulk data transfer protocols to achieve high throughput. The basic idea is to enable nodes to transmit a sequence of packets in burst once they obtain a medium. However, due to the low-power, low-cost nature, the transceiver used in wireless sensor networks is prone to packet loss. Especially when the transmitters are mobile, packet loss becomes worse. To reduce the energy expenditure caused by packet loss and retransmission, a burst transmission scheme is required that can adapt to the link dynamics and estimate the number of packets to transmit in burst. As the mobile node is moving within the network, it cannot always maintain a stable link with one specific stationary node. When link deterioration is constantly detected, the mobile node has to initiate a handover process to seamlessly transfer the communication to a new relay node before the current link breaks. For this reason, it is vital for a mobile node to (1) determine whether a fluctuation in link quality eventually results in a disconnection, (2) foresee potential disconnection well ahead of time and establish an alternative link before the disconnection occurs, and (3) seamlessly transfer communication to the new link. In this dissertation, we focus on dealing with burst transmission and handover issues in low power mobile wireless sensor networks. To this end, we begin with designing a novel mobility enabled testing framework as the evaluation testbed for all our remaining studies. We then perform an empirical study to investigate the link characteristics in mobile environments. Using these observations as guidelines, we propose three algorithms related to mobility that will improve network performance in terms of latency and throughput: i) Mobility Enabled Testing Framework (MobiLab). Considering the high fluctuation of link quality during mobility, protocols supporting mobile wireless sensor nodes should be rigorously tested to ensure that they produce predictable outcomes before actual deployment. Furthermore, considering the typical size of wireless sensor networks and the number of parameters that can be configured or tuned, conducting repeated and reproducible experiments can be both time consuming and costly. The conventional method for evaluating the performance of different protocols and algorithms under different network configurations is to change the source code and reprogram the testbed, which requires considerable effort. To this end, we present a mobility enabled testbed for carrying out repeated and reproducible experiments, independent of the application or protocol types which should be tested. The testbed consists of, among others, a server side control station and a client side traffic ow controller which coordinates inter- and intra-experiment activities. ii) Adaptive Burst Transmission Scheme for Dynamic Environment. Emerging high data rate applications motivate bulk data transfer protocol to achieve high throughput. The basic idea is to enable nodes to transmit a sequence of packets in burst once they obtain a medium. Due to the low-power and low-cost nature, the transceiver used in wireless sensor networks is prone to packet loss. When the transmitter is mobile, packet loss becomes even worse. The existing bulk data transfer protocols are not energy efficient since they keep their radios on even while a large number of consecutive packet losses occur. To address this challenge, we propose an adaptive burst transmission scheme (ABTS). In the design of the ABTS, we estimate the expected duration in which the quality of a specific link remains stable using the conditional distribution function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of received acknowledgment packets. We exploit the expected duration to determine the number of packets to transmit in burst and the duration of the sleeping period. iii) Kalman Filter Based Handover Triggering Algorithm (KMF). Maintaining a stable link in mobile wireless sensor network is challenging. In the design of the KMF, we utilized combined link quality metrics in physical and link layers, such as Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) and packet success rate (PSR), to estimate link quality fluctuation online. Then Kalman filter is adopted to predict link dynamics ahead of time. If a predicted link quality fulfills handover trigger criterion, a handover process will be initiated to discover alternative relay nodes and establish a new link before the disconnection occurs. iv) Mobile Sender Initiated MAC Protocol (MSI-MAC). In cellular networks, mobile stations are always associated with the nearest base station through intra- and inter-cellular handover. The underlying process is that the quality of an established link is continually evaluated and handover decisions are made by resource rich base stations. In wireless sensor networks, should a seamless handover be carried out, the task has to be accomplished by energy-constraint, resource-limited, and low-power wireless sensor nodes in a distributed manner. To this end, we present MSI-MAC, a mobile sender initiated MAC protocol to enable seamless handover

Routing for Wireless Sensor Networks: From Collection to Event-Triggered Applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are collections of sensing devices using wireless communication to exchange data. In the past decades, steep advancements in the areas of microelectronics and communication systems have driven an explosive growth in the deployment of WSNs. Novel WSN applications have penetrated multiple areas, from monitoring the structural stability of historic buildings, to tracking animals in order to understand their behavior, or monitoring humans' health. The need to convey data from increasingly complex applications in a reliable and cost-effective manner translates into stringent performance requirements for the underlying WSNs. In the frame of this thesis, we have focused on developing routing protocols for multi-hop WSNs, that significantly improve their reliability, energy consumption and latency. Acknowledging the need for application-specific trade-offs, we have split our contribution into two parts. Part 1 focuses on collection protocols, catering to applications with high reliability and energy efficiency constraints, while the protocols developed in part 2 are subject to an additional bounded latency constraint. The two mechanisms introduced in the first part, WiseNE and Rep, enable the use of composite metrics, and thus significantly improve the link estimation accuracy and transmission reliability, at an energy expense far lower than the one achieved in previous proposals. The novel beaconing scheme WiseNE enables the energy-efficient addition of the RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) and LQI (Link Quality Indication) metrics to the link quality estimate by decoupling the sampling and exploration periods of each mote. This decoupling allows the use of the Trickle Algorithm, a key driver of protocols' energy efficiency, in conjunction with composite metrics. WiseNE has been applied to the Triangle Metric and validated in an online deployment. The section continues by introducing Rep, a novel sampling mechanism that leverages the packet repetitions already present in low-power preamble-sampling MAC protocols in order to improve the WSN energy consumption by one order of magnitude. WiseNE, Rep and the novel PRSSI (Penalized RSSI, a combination of PRR and RSSI) composite metric have been validated in a real smart city deployment. Part 2 introduces two mechanisms that were developed in the frame of the WiseSkin project (an initiative aimed at designing highly sensitive artificial skin for human limb prostheses), and are generally applicable to the domain of cyber-physical systems. It starts with Glossy-W, a protocol that leverages the superior energy-latency trade-off of flooding schemes based on concurrent transmissions. Glossy-W ensures the stringent synchronization requirements necessary for robust flooding, irrespective of the number of motes simultaneously reporting an event. Part 2 also introduces SCS (Synchronized Channel Sampling), a novel mechanism capable of reducing the power required for periodic polling, while maintaining the event detection reliability, and enhancing the network coexistence. The testbed experiments performed show that SCS manages to reduce the energy consumption of the state-of-the-art protocol Back-to-Back Robust Flooding by over one third, while maintaining an equivalent reliability, and remaining compatible with simultaneous event detection. SCS' benefits can be extended to the entire family of state-of-the-art protocols relying on concurrent transmissions

Low-energy sensor network protocols and application to smart wind turbines

The Internet of Things (IoT) has shown promise as an enabling technology for a wide variety of applications, from smart homes to infrastructure monitoring and management. However, a number of challenges remain before the grand vision of an everything-sensed, everything-connected world can be achieved. One of these challenges is the energy problem: how can embedded, networked sensor devices be sustainably powered over the lifetime of an application? To that end, this dissertation focuses on reducing energy consumption of communication protocols in wireless sensor networks and the IoT. The motivating application is wind energy infrastructure monitoring and management, or smart wind turbines. A variety of approaches to low-energy protocol design are studied. The result is a family of low-energy communication protocols, including one specifically designed for nodes deployed on wind turbine blades. This dissertation also presents background information on monitoring and management of wind turbines, and a vision of how the proposed protocols could be integrated and deployed to enable smart wind turbine applications

Duty-cycled Wake-up Schemes for Ultra-low Power Wireless Communications

In sensor network applications with low traffic intensity, idle channel listening is one of the main sources of energy waste.The use of a dedicated low-power wake-up receiver (WRx) which utilizes duty-cycled channel listening can significantlyreduce idle listening energy cost. In this thesis such a scheme is introduced and it is called DCW-MAC, an acronym forduty-cycled wake-up receiver based medium access control.We develop the concept in several steps, starting with an investigation into the properties of these schemes under idealizedconditions. This analysis show that DCW-MAC has the potential to significantly reduce energy costs, compared to twoestablished reference schemes based only on low-power wake up receivers or duty-cycled listening. Findings motivatefurther investigations and more detailed analysis of energy consumption. We do this in two separate steps, first concentratingon the energy required to transmit wake-up beacons and later include all energy costs in the analysis. The more completeanalysis makes it possible to optimize wake-up beacons and other DCW-MAC parameters, such as sleep and listen intervals,for minimal energy consumption. This shows how characteristics of the wake-up receiver influence how much, and if, energycan be saved and what the resulting average communication delays are. Being an analysis based on closed form expressions,rather than simulations, we can derive and verify good approximations of optimal energy consumption and resulting averagedelays, making it possible to quickly evaluate how a different wake-up receiver characteristic influences what is possible toachieve in different scenarios.In addition to the direct optimizations of the DCW-MAC scheme, we also provide a proof-of-concept in 65 nm CMOS,showing that the digital base-band needed to implement DCW-MAC has negligible energy consumption compared to manylow-power analog front-ends in literature. We also propose a a simple frame-work for comparing the relative merits ofanalog front-ends for wake-up receivers, where we use the experiences gained about DCW-MAC energy consumption toprovide a simple relation between wake-up receiver/analog front-end properties and energy consumption for wide ranges ofscenario parameters. Using this tool it is possible to compare analog front-ends used in duty-cycled wake-up schemes, evenif they are originally designed for different scenarios.In all, the thesis presents a new wake-up receiver scheme for low-power wireless sensor networks and provide a comprehensiveanalysis of many of its important properties

Agrégation de données dans les réseaux de capteurs sans fil

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been regarded as an emerging and promis- ing field in both academia and industry. Currently, such networks are deployed due to their unique properties, such as self-organization and ease of deployment. How- ever, there are still some technical challenges needed to be addressed, such as energy and network capacity constraints. Data aggregation, as a fundamental solution, pro- cesses information at sensor level as a useful digest, and only transmits the digest to the sink. The energy and capacity consumptions are reduced due to less data packets transmission. As a key category of data aggregation, aggregation function, solving how to aggregate information at sensor level, is investigated in this thesis.We make four main contributions: firstly, we propose two new networking-oriented metrics to evaluate the performance of aggregation function: aggregation ratio and packet size coefficient. Aggregation ratio is used to measure the energy saving by data aggregation, and packet size coefficient allows to evaluate the network capac- ity change due to data aggregation. Using these metrics, we confirm that data ag- gregation saves energy and capacity whatever the routing or MAC protocol is used. Secondly, to reduce the impact of sensitive raw data, we propose a data-independent aggregation method which benefits from similar data evolution and achieves better re- covered fidelity. Thirdly, a property-independent aggregation function is proposed to adapt the dynamic data variations. Comparing to other functions, our proposal can fit the latest raw data better and achieve real adaptability without assumption about the application and the network topology. Finally, considering a given application, a tar- get accuracy, we classify the forecasting aggregation functions by their performances. The networking-oriented metrics are used to measure the function performance, and a Markov Decision Process is used to compute them. Dataset characterization and classification framework are also presented to guide researcher and engineer to select an appropriate functions under specific requirements.Depuis plusieurs années, les réseaux de capteurs sans fil sont considérés comme un domaine émergent et prometteur tant dans le milieu universitaire que dans l’industrie. De tels réseaux ont déjà été largement déployés en raison de leurs propriétés clés, telles que l’auto-organisation et leur autonomie en énergie. Cependant, il reste de nombreux défis scientifiques telles que la réduction de la consommation d’énergie sur des capteurs de plus en plus petits et la capacité du réseau tenant compte de liens à bande passante réduite. Selon nous, l’agrégation de données apparaît comme une so- lution pour ces deux défis, car au lieu d’envoyer une donnée, l’agrégation va traiter les informations collectées au niveau du capteur et produire une donnée agrégée qui sera effectivement transmise au puits. L’énergie et la capacité du réseau seront donc économisées car il y aura moins de transmissions de données. Le travail de cette thèse s’intéresse principalement aux fonctions d’agrégationNous faisons quatre contributions principales. Tout d’abord, nous proposons deux nouvelles métriques pour évaluer les performances des fonctions d’agrégations vue au niveau réseau : le taux d’agrégation et le facteur d’accroissement de la taille des paquets. Le taux d’agrégation est utilisé pour mesurer le gain de paquets non trans- mis grâce à l’agrégation tandis que le facteur d’accroissement de la taille des pa- quets permet d’évaluer la variation de la taille des paquets en fonction des politiques d’agrégation. Ces métriques permettent de quantifier l’apport de l’agrégation dans l’économie d’énergie et de la capacité utilisée en fonction du protocole de routage con- sidéré et de la couche MAC retenue. Deuxièmement, pour réduire l’impact des don- nées brutes collectées par les capteurs, nous proposons une méthode d’agrégation de données indépendante de la mesure physique et basée sur les tendances d’évolution des données. Nous montrons que cette méthode permet de faire une agrégation spa- tiale efficace tout en améliorant la fidélité des données agrégées. En troisième lieu, et parce que dans la plupart des travaux de la littérature, une hypothèse sur le com- portement de l’application et/ou la topologie du réseau est toujours sous-entendue, nous proposons une nouvelle fonction d’agrégation agnostique de l’application et des données devant être collectées. Cette fonction est capable de s’adapter aux données mesurées et à leurs évolutions dynamiques. Enfin, nous nous intéressons aux outilspour proposer une classification des fonctions d’agrégation. Autrement dit, consid- érant une application donnée et une précision cible, comment choisir les meilleures fonctions d’agrégations en termes de performances. Les métriques, que nous avons proposé, sont utilisées pour mesurer la performance de la fonction, et un processus de décision markovien est utilisé pour les mesurer. Comment caractériser un ensem- ble de données est également discuté. Une classification est proposée dans un cadre précis

Smart Wireless Sensor Networks

The recent development of communication and sensor technology results in the growth of a new attractive and challenging area - wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A wireless sensor network which consists of a large number of sensor nodes is deployed in environmental fields to serve various applications. Facilitated with the ability of wireless communication and intelligent computation, these nodes become smart sensors which do not only perceive ambient physical parameters but also be able to process information, cooperate with each other and self-organize into the network. These new features assist the sensor nodes as well as the network to operate more efficiently in terms of both data acquisition and energy consumption. Special purposes of the applications require design and operation of WSNs different from conventional networks such as the internet. The network design must take into account of the objectives of specific applications. The nature of deployed environment must be considered. The limited of sensor nodes� resources such as memory, computational ability, communication bandwidth and energy source are the challenges in network design. A smart wireless sensor network must be able to deal with these constraints as well as to guarantee the connectivity, coverage, reliability and security of network's operation for a maximized lifetime. This book discusses various aspects of designing such smart wireless sensor networks. Main topics includes: design methodologies, network protocols and algorithms, quality of service management, coverage optimization, time synchronization and security techniques for sensor networks

Analysis of the energy latency trade-off in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) haben im letzten Jahrzehnt eine erhebliche Aufmerksamkeit erlangt. Diese Netzwerke zeichnen sich durch begrenzte Energieressourcen der Sensorknoten aus. Daher ist Energieeffizienz ein wichtiges Thema in Systemdesign und -betrieb von WSNs. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf großflächige Anwendungen von WSNs wie Umwelt- oder Lebensraumüberwachung, die in der Regel den Ad-hoc-Einsatz von Knoten in großen Anzahl erfordern. Ad-hoc-Einsatz und Budgetbeschränkungen hindern Entwickler an der Programmierung der Knoten mit zusätzlichen Informationen wie beispielsweise Routingtabellen, Positionskoordinaten, oder Netzwerkgrenzen. Um diese Informationen zu beschaffen, ist es üblich verschiedene Initialisierungsschemen mit erheblichen Auswirkungen auf den Energieverbrauch und den Programmieraufwand zu implementieren. In Anbetracht dieser Beschränkungen ist ein neues Paradigma für die Initialisierung und den Betrieb von WSNs notwendig, das sich durch einfachen Einsatz und minimalen Energieaufwand auszeichnet. In dieser Arbeit nutzen wir Sink-Mobilität, um den Initialisierungsoverhead und den operativen Overhead zu reduzieren. Unser erster großer Beitrag ist ein Boundary Identification Schema für WSNs mit dem Namen "Mobile Sink based Boundary Detection" (MoSBoD). Es nutzt die Sink-Mobilität um den Kommunikationsoverhead der Sensorknoten zu reduzieren, was zu einer Erhöhung der Laufzeit des WSN führt. Außerdem entstehen durch das Schema keine Einschränkungen in Bezug auf Nodeplacement, Kommunikationsmodell, oder Ortsinformationen der Knoten. Der zweite große Beitrag ist das Congestion avoidance low Latency and Energy efficient (CaLEe) Routingprotokoll für WSNs. CaLEe basiert auf der virtuellen Partitionierung eines Sensorsbereich in Sektoren und der diskreten Mobilität der Sink im WSN. Unsere Simulationsergebnisse zeigen, dass CaLEe, im Vergleich zum derzeitigen State-of-the-art, nicht nur eine erhebliche Reduzierung der durchschnittlichen Energy Dissipation per Node erzielt, sondern auch eine geringere durchschnittliche End-to-End Data Latency in realistischen Szenarien erreicht. Darüber hinaus haben wir festgestellt, dass kein einziges Protokoll in der Lage ist, eine Best-Case-Lösung (minimale Data Latency und minimale Energy Dissipation) für variierende Netzwerkkonfigurationen, die beispielsweise mithilfe der Parameter Kommunikationsbereich der Nodes, Nodedichte, Durchsatz des Sensorfelds definiert werden können, bieten. Daher ist der dritte Hauptbeitrag dieser Arbeit die Identifikation von (auf unterschiedlichen Netzwerkkonfigurationen basierenden) „Operational Regions“, in denen einzelne Protokolle besser arbeiten als andere. Zusammenfassend kann man sagen, dass diese Dissertation das klassische Energieeffizienzproblem der WSNs (Ressource-begrenzte Knoten) aufgreift und gleichzeitig die End-to-End Data Latency auf einen annehmbaren Rahmen eingrenzt.Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have gained a considerable attention over the last decade. These networks are characterized by limited amount of energy supply at sensor node. Hence, energy efficiency is an important issue in system design and operation of WSN. This thesis focuses on large-scale applications of WSN, such as environment or habitat monitoring that usually requires ad-hoc deployment of the nodes in large numbers. Ad-hoc deployment and budget constraints restrict developers from programming the nodes with information like routing tables, position coordinates of the node, boundary of the network. In order to acquire this information, state-of-the-art is to program nodes with various initialization schemes that are heavy both from WSN’s (energy consumption) and programmer’s perspectives (programming effort). In view of these particular constraints, we require a new paradigm for WSN initialization and operation, which should be easy to deploy and have minimal energy demands. In this thesis, we exploit sink mobility to reduce the WSN initialization and operational overhead. Our first major contribution is a boundary identification scheme for WSN, named “Mobile Sink based Boundary detection” (MoSBoD). It exploits the sink mobility to remove the communication overhead from the sensor nodes, which leads to an increase in the lifetime of the WSN. Furthermore, it does not impose any restrictions on node placement, communication model, or location information of the nodes. The second major contribution is Congestion avoidance low Latency and Energy efficient (CaLEe) routing protocol for WSN. CaLEe is based on virtual partitioning of a sensor field into sectors and discrete mobility of the sink in the WSN. Our simulation results showed that CaLEe not only achieve considerable reduction in average energy dissipation per node compared to current state-of-the-art routing protocols but also accomplish lesser average end-to-end data latency under realistic scenarios. Furthermore, we observe that no single protocol is capable of providing best-case solution (minium data latency and minimum energy dissipation) under varying network configurations, which can be defined using communication range of the nodes, node density, throughput of the sensor field etc. Therefore, the third major contribution of this thesis is the identification of operational regions (based on varying network configurations) where one protocol performs better than the other. In summary, this thesis revisits the classic energy efficiency problem of a WSN (that have resource-limited nodes) while keeping end-to-end data latency under acceptable bounds

7. GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze

In dem vorliegenden Tagungsband sind die Beiträge des Fachgesprächs Drahtlose Sensornetze 2008 zusammengefasst. Ziel dieses Fachgesprächs ist es, Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler aus diesem Gebiet die Möglichkeit zu einem informellen Austausch zu geben – wobei immer auch Teilnehmer aus der Industrieforschung willkommen sind, die auch in diesem Jahr wieder teilnehmen.Das Fachgespräch ist eine betont informelle Veranstaltung der GI/ITG-Fachgruppe „Kommunikation und Verteilte Systeme“ (www.kuvs.de). Es ist ausdrücklich keine weitere Konferenz mit ihrem großen Overhead und der Anforderung, fertige und möglichst „wasserdichte“ Ergebnisse zu präsentieren, sondern es dient auch ganz explizit dazu, mit Neueinsteigern auf der Suche nach ihrem Thema zu diskutieren und herauszufinden, wo die Herausforderungen an die zukünftige Forschung überhaupt liegen.Das Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze 2008 findet in Berlin statt, in den Räumen der Freien Universität Berlin, aber in Kooperation mit der ScatterWeb GmbH. Auch dies ein Novum, es zeigt, dass das Fachgespräch doch deutlich mehr als nur ein nettes Beisammensein unter einem Motto ist.Für die Organisation des Rahmens und der Abendveranstaltung gebührt Dank den beiden Mitgliedern im Organisationskomitee, Kirsten Terfloth und Georg Wittenburg, aber auch Stefanie Bahe, welche die redaktionelle Betreuung des Tagungsbands übernommen hat, vielen anderen Mitgliedern der AG Technische Informatik der FU Berlin und natürlich auch ihrem Leiter, Prof. Jochen Schiller