Right now, there are hundreds of millions of cell phones in use around the world. According to UC Berkeley computer science graduate student R.J. Honicky, the ubiquity of those devices could be leveraged to help reduce pollution, fight disease, and tackle other societal scale problems with no additional effort on the part of the person carrying the phone. The key is outfitting newly manufactured cell phones with inexpensive environmental sensors.

The complete article is available here.

A tiny new generator that produces electricity from small variations in temperature could turn people into power packs for medical implants and clear the way for complex wireless monitoring systems.
Makers of tiny wireless sensors used for tracking vital signs of people in their homes or watching environmental conditions in large buildings have long faced a power problem: Batteries only last so long. And they can be difficult to replace or recharge in a device implanted, for example, inside a person’s thigh.
But a breakthrough in miniaturization promises to tap unlimited power with small, implantable thermoelectric generators capable of producing electricity from ambient heat.

The whole article is available here.

The School of Engineering, Design and Technology (EDT) at the University of Bradford is launching a new full-time master of science degree programme in wireless sensor networks - the first of its kind in the UK. The programme has been developed in response to the ever-increasing importance of sensor technology in today’s information society and builds on the Mobile and Satellite Communications Research Centre’s world-class expertise in wireless communications. The new course in wireless sensor networks is motivated and driven by the rapid technological developments and advances in this area and addresses specifically the significant foreseeable demand for chartered engineers in this exciting industry.

More information here.

A very interesting Wiki on Wireless Sensor Networks is available at the website of the Telecommunication Networks Group, Technical University of Berlin. It contains lots of resources, tutorials and descriptions of projects.

The Wiki is available here.

Jennic is offering on its website a ZigBee network stack object library and all associated support including user guides, programming and reference manuals, and application notes.

The ZigBee network stack available on the web site can be evaluated on Jennic’s JN5121-EK010 developer kit and the wireless application programmed onto chips and modules supplied by Jennic.

Priced at US$1,299, and available ex-stock from Jennic’s distributors, the kit contains all the software tools and hardware required to develop and monitor wireless sensor network products, including the ZigBee network stack.

More available here.

A paper on “Deploying a Wireless Sensor Network on an Active Volcano”, by Geoff Werner-Allen, Konrad Lorincz, Mario Ruiz, Omar Marcillo, Jeff Johnson, Jonathan Lees, and Matt Welsh, has been published in the IEEE Internet Computing, Special Issue on Data-Driven Applications in Sensor Networks, March/April 2006.

Augmenting heavy and power-hungry data collection equipment with lighter, smaller wireless sensor network nodes leads to faster,larger deployments.Arrays comprising dozens of wireless sensor nodes are now possible,allowing scientific studies that aren’t feasible with traditional instrumentation.Designing sensor networks to support volcanic studies requires addressing the high data rates and high data fidelity these studies demand.The authors’ sensor-network application for volcanic data collection relies on triggered event detection and reliable data retrieval to meet bandwidth and data-quality demands.

The paper is available here.

Honeywell Sensing and Control business (S&C) is enabling its portfolio of sensors for integration into wireless sensor networks by incorporating Crossbow’s wireless sensor networks platform into its XBW product line.

Because hard-wired, traditional control or sensing applications can be difficult and expensive, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can deliver significant cost savings and improved operational efficiencies. Now Honeywell’s customers can easily develop cost effective sensor solutions using reliable wireless sensor components integrated directly into enterprise information and management systems. The XBW product line is now available through S&C’s direct sales and distributor channel.

More info here.

CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organise the academic papers they are reading. When you see a paper on the web that interests you, you can click one button and have it added to your personal library. CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details, so there’s no need to type them in yourself. It all works from within your web browser. There’s no need to install any special software.

Because your library is stored on the server, you can access it from any computer. You can share you library with others, and find out who is reading the same papers as you. In turn, this can help you discover literature which is relevant to your field but you may not have known about.

EWSN 2007, the European conference on Wireless Sensor Networks, is the fourth of a series of annual meetings focusing on the latest research in the rapidly growing area of wireless sensor networks. EWSN 2007 will be held at Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands, on January 29-31, 2007.
The goal of this conference is to create a forum where researchers with different experience and background, from hardware to applications, can discuss cross-layer integration, novel solutions for specific problems and envisage the future development of WSN functionalities.
Call for papers is available here.
Important dates:
FULL PAPERS:
Submission: Sept 3, 2006
POSTERS:
Submission: Dec 3, 2006

A paper on ” COMMON-Sense Net: Improved Water Management for Resource-Poor Farmers via Sensor Networks”, by Jacques Panchard, Seshagiri Rao, Prabhakar T.V, H.S. Jamadagni and Jean-Pierre Hubaux, will be presented at the ICTD 2006 conference in Berkeley, USA, May 25 and 26 2006, in the ICT for Agriculture track. The paper describes the on-going design and implementation of a sensor network for agricultural management targeted at resource-poor farmers in India.

The paper is available here, in the COMMON-Sense Net website.