Tutorial 4: Wireless Sensor Networks – Research vs Reality

Duration: Half-Day
13:30 - 17:00, 30 Oct Monday

Instructor:
Dr Winston Seah
Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore

"Wireless sensor networks" has been a buzzword for the last few years in both research as well as the industry. The emergence of such networks can be attributed to recent advances in wireless communications and electronics which drastically reduced both the size and costs of various electronic components, including sensors. This has lead to the vision of networks comprising hundreds to thousands of low-cost, low-powered, multifunctional sensors that are deployed over a region to collect information. These sensors are usually randomly deployed (e.g. air-dropped) over the region and by communicating with one another using wireless (radio frequency (RF)) links they organize themselves into a network to acquire the necessary data required by the application(s) and deliver the data to a collection point (commonly known as a sink). Ask any researcher and this will be the most likely scenario that motivates their research. We shall first explore the outcomes of the research in wireless (RF) sensor networks over the last few years. Then, we take a reality check and find out what kind of sensor networks are indeed being deployed and used in real applications, taking examples from the local scene in Singapore. Then, we revert back to crystal ball gazing and provide an overview of future variants and applications of wireless (not necessarily RF) sensor networks.

Winston Khoon Guan SEAH received the Dr.Eng. degree from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. He is a Senior Scientist in the Network Technology Department of the Institute for Infocomm Research (I²R). Prior to I²R, he had been a Principal Member of Technical Staff, and director of the Internet Technologies programme in the Institute for Communications Research. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Concurrently, he is an adjunct faculty in the Graduate School for Integrative Science and Engineering, and the Department of Computer Science in the National University of Singapore. He is actively involved in research and development in the areas of mobile ad hoc and sensor networks, and co-developed one of the first quality of service (QoS) models for mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). His latest research focuses on mobility-enhanced protocols and algorithms for C3 and sensing applications in terrestrial and oceanographic ad hoc sensor networks. He is also on the technical program committee of numerous conferences and reviewer of papers for many key journals and conferences in the area of MANET and sensor networks. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.

[Homepage: http://www1.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/~winston]