Laura Margarita Rodríguez Peralta

Wireless Sensor Networks Applied to Museums' Environmental Monitoring

Monitoring the museums environment for preventive conservation of art purposes is one major concern to all museums. In order to properly conserve the artwork it is critical to continuously measure some parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, light and, also, pollutants, either in storage or exhibition rooms. The deployment of a wireless sensor network in a museum can help implementing these measurements in real-time, continuously, and in a much easier and cheap way. In this paper, we present a practical testbed deployed in a museum called Fortaleza Sao Tiago, located in Madeira Island, Portugal. This work is being developed in the context of an ongoing project on museum environmental and structural monitoring using wireless sensor networks. The experimental testbed is described, as well as all the problems identified.

A Collaborative Model for Wireless Sensor Networks Applied to Museums' Environmental Monitoring

Monitoring the museums environment for preventive conservation of art purposes is one major concern to all museums. In order to properly conserve the artwork it is critical to continuously measure some parameters, such as temperature, relative humidity, light and, also, pollutants, either in storage or exhibition rooms. The deployment of a wireless sensor network in a museum can help implementing these measurements in real-time, continuously, and in a much easier and cheap way. In this paper, we present a practical testbed deployed in a museum called Fortaleza Sao Tiago, located in Madeira Island, Portugal. This work is being developed in the context of an ongoing project on museum environmental and structural monitoring using wireless sensor networks. The experimental testbed is described, as well as all the problems identified.

Collaborative Localization in Wireless Sensor Networks

Determining the localization of nodes in a Wireless Sensor Network is a very important task, which involves collaboration between nodes. Localization is a fundamental service since it is relevant to many applications and to the network main functions. Collaboration is essential to self-localization, so that localization can be accomplished by the nodes themselves, without any human intervention. In this paper, we first analyze the key aspects that have to be considered when designing or choosing a solution for the localization problem. Then, we present the types of current localization algorithms, making a broad comparison among the most relevant algorithms. With this comparative analysis, we aim at identifying a more complete algorithm able to adapt itself to a wide variety of possibilities (number and density of nodes, obstacles and terrain irregularities, network topology, node mobility, etc.).

Bringing integrated multimedia content into virtual reality environments

Most of the tools and languages for modeling Virtual Reality environments, such as VRML, X3D, Java3D, etc. do not allow the description of synchronized presentation of multimedia content inside these environments. Multimedia capabilities motivate users capturing their attention, which is actually an asset when we want to provide them with a higher degree of immersion inside Virtual Reality applications. This paper presents a robust and generic solution for the integrated presentation of different kinds of media objects inside virtual environments based on the Graphical Engine OGRE.

A collaborative model for representing wireless sensor networks' entities and properties

Wireless sensor nodes are, typically, resource limited. Therefore, the major functions of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) cannot be accomplished without collaboration among sensor nodes. In this paper, we present the Wireless Sensor Networks Supported Cooperative Work (WSNSCW) model. The key contribution of this model, when comparing to other models, is allowing for the representation of all the components and properties of a WSN. We also present the main entities and properties of this graph-based model, as well as its formalization.

Towards a Collaborative Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

Collaboration is crucial to Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) as a result of the typical resource limitations of wireless sensor nodes. In this paper, we present a model of collaborative work for WSNs. This model is called Wireless Sensor Networks Supported Cooperative Work (WSNSCW) and was created for these specific networks. We also present the formalization of some entities of the model and its properties. This is a generic model that is being used as a basis for the development of a 3D awareness tool for WSNs.

Designing consistent multimedia documents: the RT-LOTOS methodology

Interactive Multimedia Documents (IMDs) are expected to satisfy temporal consistency properties in order to ensure that their synchronization constraints (temporal, logical and causal) can be respected during their presentation. If an inconsistent situation can not be detected previously, the presentation of the document can be lead to undesirable deadlocks (global or partial). In particular, the flexibility of high level authoring models (such as SMIL 2.0) for the edition of complex IMDs can lead authors, in certain cases, to specify inconsistent documents. For this reason, it is necessary to apply a methodology that provides the formal modelling for the dynamic behavior of the document, consistency checking, and the scheduling of the presentation taking into account the temporal non-determinism of these documents. This paper presents the main results of the development of a formal methodology which is based on the Formal Description Technique RT-LOTOS, and which has been successfully applied to support the design of complex SMIL 2.0 documents.

Managing Collaborative Sessions in WSNs

In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), the sensor nodes are typically resource limited. This fact fosters the nodes to collaborate in order to implement their tasks. Therefore, WSNs are, inherently, collaborative networks. In this paper, we propose and implement a model that represents the various types of collaboration relationships that can be established in a WSN. This involves identifying and analyzing the different types of collaboration that may occur in any WSN. As a result, we propose a hierarchy composed by all types and different levels of collaboration, and we propose a collaborative session management tool, called WISE-MANager. This tool allows bringing these concepts into practice, more precisely to the establishment of collaborative sessions. WISE-MANager increases the WNS’s flexibility and the interaction between the user and the network.

Towards the Implementation of an Awareness Tool Based in a Collaborative Model for WSNs, Using XML

The major functions of a wireless sensor network (WSN) cannot be accomplished without collaboration among wireless sensor nodes. However, most of the work found in literature only focuses a specific type of collaboration, associated with the accomplishment of a certain task, such as: signal processing, routing, etc. In this paper, we present a graph-based model of collaborative work created specifically for WSNs, which allows for representing all the entities of the network. We also present the formalization of some entities of the model and its properties, as well as its XML representation. This model is being used as a basis for the development of a 3D awareness tool for WSNs.

A Model-Based Awareness Tool for Synchronous Collaborative Sessions

Awareness describes the knowledge acquired by a member of a collaborative session about the activities of the other members of this session. This paper presents the mains aspects of the development of an awareness tool based on an information-oriented coordination model for synchronous collaboration sessions. This tool is supported by an adaptive layered architecture which is based on collaborative extensions of Java language, Java 3D and XML possibilities in terms of data structuring. The application field is related to the execution of a project review for the distributed collaborative design, which is applied to a spatial-domain scenario from the European project DSE (distributed system engineering)