The ability to scatter lots of wireless sensors over a wide area has tremendous potential, whether it’s tracking the melting of a glacier, the stress on a bridge span or the temperature in your home. The trick? Making them cheap enough so you can use plenty, and having them last long enough so you don’t break the bank or your back changing batteries (those trips to the glacier add up). This week, Microsoft showed us a prototype version of a wireless sensor that tackles both challenges.

The sensors shown at Microsoft’s TechFest (the company’s annual science fair) run on a pair of AA batteries for up to four years. And while they didn’t have cost estimates for a final production model, the basic data processing/radio transmitter chips from TI sell for only about $3 each.

More info here.

From Bruno Giussani’s blog:

Question: how much do you know about the quality of your own, personal, local climate? Do you know the concentration of CO2 in the air you’re breathing, in the air that people are breathing in your neighborhood or city?

I’m pretty sure your answer is “no”. These data aren’t collected at that micro scale, and even when they are collected (by public authorities, research entities or private firms) they aren’t generally made easily available.

That’s the premise behind my friend Leandro (Leeander) Agrò’s OpenSpime idea, which he and his small team at WideTag Inc in Turin, Italy, are turning into both a product and, hopefully soon, a movement.

A “spime” (the word — a contraction of “space” and “time” — was coined by sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling) is an object that, thanks to GPS and sensors, is aware of where and when it is, and can record and communicate these data. OpenSpimes are designed to allow everyone to record and visualize environmental (or other) data, to store them, publish them, blog them, compare them, mix and mash them up.

More info here.

EuroSSC was held before in Enschede (NL) and Kendal (UK). Building on the success of the last years, 3rd European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context (EuroSSC 2008) will include a highly selective single-track program for technical papers, accompanied by posters, demonstrations, invited speakers, and an industrial panel. Topics include (but are not limited to):

* Distributed smart sensing and context recognition
* Context processing
* Context-aware actuators, interaction methods, and human aspects
* Applications, deployment, test beds and case studies

EuroSSC 2008 will be held on October 29-31 in Zurich, Switzerland.

Paper submission is on June 6, 2008. For more information, please visit the conference website at http://www.eurossc.org/

From Crossbow’s blog:

Can you imagine a place where the temperature can get to -82°C? A place without sunlight for half the year. Imagine a frozen desert with no permanent human population - the coldest, driest and windiest continent on earth… It is in this place that research scientists from the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have deployed a wireless sensing system using Crossbow’s Mote platforms. Being a resident of sunny California I can barely fathom such an environment. If the temperature drops below 50°F (10°C), I want a cup of hot chocolate and a fire to cuddle in front of. Imagine being in a place where the climate is so harsh - there are no plants or animals. Talk about extreme sensing!

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are quickly gaining popularity in both military and civilian applications. However, WSN is especially vulnerable against external and internal attacks due to its particular characteristics. It is necessary to provide WSN with basic security mechanisms and protocols that can guarantee a minimal protection to the services and the information flow. This means the hardware layer needs to be protected against node compromise, the communication channels should meet certain security goals (like confidentiality, integrity and authentication), and the protocols and services of the network must be robust against any possible interference.

This book by J. Lopez and J. Zhou provides a deep overview of the major security issues that any WSN designers have to face, and also gives a comprehensive guide of existing solutions and open problems. The book is targeted for the semi-technical readers (technical managers, graduate students, engineers) as well as the specialists. They will get a clear picture regarding what security challenges they will face and what solutions they could use in the context of wireless sensor networks. They will also benefit from the cutting-edge research topics being presented.

More info about this book here.