Channel estimation and transmit power control in wireless body area networks

Wireless body area networks have recently received much attention because of their application to assisted living and remote patient monitoring. For these applications, energy minimisation is a critical issue since, in many cases, batteries cannot be easily replaced or recharged. Reducing energy expenditure by avoiding unnecessary high transmission power and minimising frame retransmissions is therefore crucial. In this study, a transmit power control scheme suitable for IEEE 802.15.6 networks operating in beacon mode with superframe boundaries is proposed. The transmission power is modulated, frame-by-frame, according to a run-time estimation of the channel conditions. Power measurements using the beacon frames are made periodically, providing reverse channel gain and an opportunistic fade margin, set on the basis of prior power fluctuations, is added. This approach allows tracking of the highly variable on-body to on-body propagation channel without the need to transmit additional probe frames. An experimental study based on test cases demonstrates the effectiveness of the scheme and compares its performance with alternative solutions presented in the literature

Wireless sensor systems in indoor situation modeling II (WISM II)

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A Review of the Enviro-Net Project

Ecosystems monitoring is essential to properly understand their development and the effects of events, both climatological and anthropological in nature. The amount of data used in these assessments is increasing at very high rates. This is due to increasing availability of sensing systems and the development of new techniques to analyze sensor data. The Enviro-Net Project encompasses several of such sensor system deployments across five countries in the Americas. These deployments use a few different ground-based sensor systems, installed at different heights monitoring the conditions in tropical dry forests over long periods of time. This paper presents our experience in deploying and maintaining these systems, retrieving and pre-processing the data, and describes the Web portal developed to help with data management, visualization and analysis.Comment: v2: 29 pages, 5 figures, reflects changes addressing reviewers' comments v1: 38 pages, 8 figure

An Implementation for Dynamic Application Allocation in Shared Sensor Networks

We present a system architecture implementation to perform dynamic application allocation in shared sensor networks, where highly integrated wireless sensor systems are used to support multiple applications. The architecture is based on a central controller that collects the received data from the sensor nodes, dynamically decides which applications must be simultaneously deployed in each node and, accordingly, over-the-air reprograms the sensor nodes. Waspmote devices are used as sensor nodes that communicate with the controller using ZigBee protocol. Experimental results show the viability of the proposal

Dead Reckoning Localization Technique for Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Localization in wireless sensor networks not only provides a node with its geographical location but also a basic requirement for other applications such as geographical routing. Although a rich literature is available for localization in static WSN, not enough work is done for mobile WSNs, owing to the complexity due to node mobility. Most of the existing techniques for localization in mobile WSNs uses Monte-Carlo localization, which is not only time-consuming but also memory intensive. They, consider either the unknown nodes or anchor nodes to be static. In this paper, we propose a technique called Dead Reckoning Localization for mobile WSNs. In the proposed technique all nodes (unknown nodes as well as anchor nodes) are mobile. Localization in DRLMSN is done at discrete time intervals called checkpoints. Unknown nodes are localized for the first time using three anchor nodes. For their subsequent localizations, only two anchor nodes are used. The proposed technique estimates two possible locations of a node Using Bezouts theorem. A dead reckoning approach is used to select one of the two estimated locations. We have evaluated DRLMSN through simulation using Castalia simulator, and is compared with a similar technique called RSS-MCL proposed by Wang and Zhu .Comment: Journal Paper, IET Wireless Sensor Systems, 201

Armstrong Flight Research Center Flight Test Capabilities and Opportunities for the Applications of Wireless Data Acquisition Systems

The presentation will overview NASA Armstrong Flight Research Centers flight test capabilities, which can provide various means for flight testing of passive and active wireless sensor systems, also, it will address the needs of the wireless data acquisition solutions for the centers flight instrumentation issues such as additional weight caused by added instrumentation wire bundles, connectors, wire cables routing, moving components, etc., that the Passive Wireless Sensor Technology Workshop may help. The presentation shows the constraints and requirements that the wireless sensor systems will face in the flight test applications

Wireless sensor systems with energy harvesting capabilities for safety enhancement in agricultural vehicles

This paper presents an overview of a multi-sensor wireless system applied to agricultural vehicles. The data provided by the different kinds of ad-hoc developed wireless sensors can be used as starting point for the implementation of an automatic system for the active safety enhancement of the vehicles. In order to guarantee a lifetime comparable with the one of the implement or trailer where they are mounted, each sensor has his own energy harvesting system able to gather energy from the vibrations occurring in the environment where the sensor operates

Minimum energy wireless sensor networks

PhD programme overviewHere, on-off keying modulation is used as a means of reducing the transmit energy requirements whilst exploiting inherent channel coding, which sets the scene of this PhD study

Cu based patch antenna on polymer substrate for flexible wireless sensor systems applications

AbstractIn this work we designed, simulated and developed a flexible 10 GHz patch antenna using standard microsystem technology. Liquid crystal polymer (LCP) is used as substrate and Copper (Cu) as metallization thin film. LCP and Cu are best suited for high frequency applications because of their excellent electrical properties such as resistivity and dielectric constant. To protect the antenna it is passivated and encapsulated with parylene C. Parylene C was deposited at room temperature using standard Gorham system. The effect of Cu metallization and parylene C passivation on antenna indicator parameters such as resonance frequency, input reflection coefficient, bandwidth and gain are investigated. Furthermore the specific resistance of Cu lines on LCP substrates is investigated