Dennis J. A. Bijwaard

Industry: using dynamic WSNs in smart logistics for fruits and pharmacy

In this paper we describe a smart way to apply dynamic wireless sensor networks (WSN) in logistics. Especially in the temperature controlled supply chain (cold chain), perishable goods like fruits and pharmaceuticals greatly benefit from real-time quality monitoring during storage and transport in order to avoid quality degradation and spoilage. In our system, wireless sensor nodes called SmartPoints monitor the environmental conditions and generate alarms when specific events are detected. Additionally, they calculate the remaining shelf life of the perishable goods they travel with. When there is an Internet-connected WSN available during travel, the shelf-life prediction and associated alarms are directly sent to a back-end server. Alternatively they are logged on the SmartPoints and flushed upon arrival, such that the remaining shelf-life and alarms are immediately clear and a full history will be available later. Our dynamic WSN supports a number of protocols that enable support for the dynamic processes in logistic processes. The Ambient middleware supports real-time monitoring and remote maintenance across the Internet via wired and mobile wireless network access technologies. Additionally, the middleware offers easy integration with third-party applications. Ambient Studio utilizes the middleware for remote WSN configuration and monitoring.

Sensor networks in the low lands.

This paper provides an overview of scientific and industrial developments of the last decade in the area of sensor networks in The Netherlands (Low Lands). The goal is to highlight areas in which the Netherlands has made most contributions and is currently a dominant player in the field of sensor networks. On the one hand, motivations, addressed topics, and initiatives taken in this period are presented, while on the other hand, special emphasis is given to identifying current and future trends and formulating a vision for the coming five to ten years. The presented overview and trend analysis clearly show that Dutch research and industrial efforts, in line with recent worldwide developments in the field of sensor technology, present a clear shift from sensor node platforms, operating systems, communication, networking, and data management aspects of the sensor networks to reasoning/cognition, control, and actuation.

Analysis of Mobility and Sharing of WSNs By IP Applications

Movement of wireless sensor and actuator networks, and of nodes between WSANs are becoming more commonplace. However, enabling remote usage of sensory data in multiple applications, remote configuration, and actuation is still a big challenge. The purpose of this paper is to analyse and describe which mobility support can best be used in different scenarios, and how shared usage of mobile WSANs by multiple IP applications can best be scaled up. This paper describes logistic and person monitoring scenarios, where different types of movements take place. These mobility types and their implications are categorized and analysed. Different degrees of support for these mobility types are analysed in the context of the mobility scenarios. Additionally, different schemes are analysed for shared use of mobile WSANs by multiple applications. In conclusion, guidelines are provided for dealing with mobile and overlapping WSANs and the most promising scheme for shared use of mobile WSANs by IP applications.

Reuse of pervasive system architectures

Developers are often confronted with incompatible systems and lack a proper system abstraction that allows easy integration of various hardware and software components. To try solve these shortcomings, building blocks are identified at different levels of detail in today’s pervasive/communication systems and used in a conceptual reasoning framework allowing easy comparison and combination. The generality of the conceptual framework is validated by decomposing a selection of pervasive systems into models of these building blocks and integrating these models to create improved ones. Additionally, the required properties of pervasive systems on scalability, efficiency, degree of pervasiveness, and maintainability are analysed for a number of application areas. The pervasive systems are compared on these properties. Observations are made, and weak points in the analysed pervasive systems are identified. Furthermore, we provide a set of recommendations as a guideline towards flexible architectures that make pervasive systems usable in a variety of applications.

Challenges in Efficient Realtime Mobile Sharing

Future applications are envisioned to be adaptive to various changes in network, environment and situation. These so-called pervasive applications will be composed from both locally and globally available multimedia resources such as audio and video, web services and context sources. The rapidly increasing pervasiveness in todays networks, i.e. the number of mobile devices, the amount of data they generate and share (near) realtime increases rapidly. In fact this forms the basis for research efforts on the Internet of Things. The increased pervasiveness leads to numerous efficiency and scalability challenges. This chapter will detail the state of the art and binding concepts for efficient realtime sharing and mobility of multimedia and context. Additionally, it lists the associated challenges and their progress in a number of research projects.