Wireless changes sensor nets

By John Cox, NetworkWorld.com, 06/07/04

This week, we look at how wireless is changing sensor networks, and opening the door to networking "everything except the kitchen sink." You can expect a lot of these devices, all directly addressable, to show up on your enterprise net, along with their traffic.

Berkeley is one of the many universities working in this space, with its Network Embedded Systems Technology (NEST). You can find a slide presentation, from June 2003, that gives an overview of some of the issues and technologies here.

And for information on the Open Source project, Tiny OS, which is, as the same suggests, an operating system for teensy, weensy devices, check out this link.

Back to Wireless Notes

Comments

While I respect what David Culler and his team have done, we must be careful that we do not start beleiving our own hype. In the mesh networking arena, success in one arena of mesh networking is used to imply potential success in others. Let me elaborate.

There are atleast 4 distinct areas where mesh networking plays:

1-Sensor networks: low power, low bandwidth, low cost. David Culler has demonstrated that low power, low cost 900 MHz radios suffice. And that mesh networking - even single radio mesh networks - suffice even with multiple hops, because the amount of data being transmitted is so small.

2-WMAN, Hotzone applications where the focus is moving lots of bits fast with wireless "pipes". Here bandwidth is paramount and to ensure both bandwidth and latency, single radio approaches just dont work. Reasons explained under:

http://www.meshdynamics.com/MultipleRadios.html

3-Military/Public Safety/Emergency Respone. This used to be a simple (low bandwidth) voice transmission scenario. Not any more. Tropps, Firefighters will need video and data connectivity with guarenteed connectivity in high mobility situations. As the number of people involved in an incident increase ( there were thousands, I am told, at the world trade denter), conventional mesh networks used breaks down rapidly. A hybrid mesh infrastructure is needed as described under:

http://www.meshdynamics.com/WERHybridMesh.html

4-Mesh Networks for UWB. Here the need to support multiple Pico nets, Beacon alignment etc, make this a very different mesh solution. We recently submitted an article to UWBInsider that covers some of this:

http://www.uwbinsider.com/technology/1_8_mesh_challenges.html

Kudos are due to David Culler for his work in sensor networking. And a lot more work has to happen under mesh networking in the other arenas.

Francis daCosta
Founder and CTO
www.meshdynamics.com
fdacosta@meshdynamics.com

Posted by: Francis daCosta on June 16, 2004 12:43 PM

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