19,258 research outputs found
Scaling Configuration of Energy Harvesting Sensors with Reinforcement Learning
With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), an increasing number of
energy harvesting methods are being used to supplement or supplant battery
based sensors. Energy harvesting sensors need to be configured according to the
application, hardware, and environmental conditions to maximize their
usefulness. As of today, the configuration of sensors is either manual or
heuristics based, requiring valuable domain expertise. Reinforcement learning
(RL) is a promising approach to automate configuration and efficiently scale
IoT deployments, but it is not yet adopted in practice. We propose solutions to
bridge this gap: reduce the training phase of RL so that nodes are operational
within a short time after deployment and reduce the computational requirements
to scale to large deployments. We focus on configuration of the sampling rate
of indoor solar panel based energy harvesting sensors. We created a simulator
based on 3 months of data collected from 5 sensor nodes subject to different
lighting conditions. Our simulation results show that RL can effectively learn
energy availability patterns and configure the sampling rate of the sensor
nodes to maximize the sensing data while ensuring that energy storage is not
depleted. The nodes can be operational within the first day by using our
methods. We show that it is possible to reduce the number of RL policies by
using a single policy for nodes that share similar lighting conditions.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure
Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited
devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within
an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness
in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost,
WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology
formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object
detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make
optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design
goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process
(MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms
and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and
compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs
A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks
In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs
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