Table of contents
Excerpts from all chapters are available here
Amazon link

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is paying researchers to hook up chickens with a “hen-mountable wireless system” to study how they interact with other birds. The work will help the farmers know how much space hens need and what types of “non-cage housing systems” will provide the “best possible welfare for the animals,” according to MSU.

“Ultimately, the sensors will tell us what behavior a hen is performing. Is she laying an egg? Eating? Or roosting on a perch? Does she fly or walk to move around?” Janice Siegford, a professor of animal science at MSU, said in a statement.

More info here.

You may download the Rodmap here (6 Mb pdf file).

The award is given by The Swedish National Real-Time Association for the best Swedish master or final year thesis in the field of real-time and embedded systems.

The research work was conducted within the Center for Networked Systems. The author was jointly supervised by Pablo Suarez (Saab) and Thiemo Voigt (SICS).

Congratulations from the WSNBlog team!

More details here and there

Innovative uses of advanced sensors and sensor networks are starting to be translated into new ecological knowledge. These sensors are providing a new set of “eyes” through which researchers may observe the world in new ways, extend spatial and temporal scales of observation, more accurately estimate what cannot be observed, and, most important, obtain unexpected results or develop new paradigms. Automated sensors are widely deployed by members of the Organization of Biological Field Stations, yet some needs—particularly for chemical and biological sensors—are not currently being met. There are additional opportunities for developing sensor networks at synoptic, regional, continental, and global scales. Although we are seeing more uses of sensor systems and, in particular, sensor networks, the opportunities for these systems are just beginning to be realized, with much more work to be done, including formulation of new questions, development of new sensors, better software, and new ways for researchers to work together across large distances.

From a paper in BioScience, May 2009, by American Institute of Biological Sciences

Full text available here (campus/library subscription required)

The D3S group has developed a WSN-based system to monitor the structural health of a medieval tower of Torre Aquila in Trento, Italy, part of the Castello del Buonconsiglio complex, which hosts world-renowned frescoes from the 13th century. The system has been running since August 2008, and monitors vibrations, deformation, humidity, and temperature.

D3S is a research group involving researchers from the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of the University of Trento and FBK-IRST.

The hardware platform and custom sensors for this project were provided by TRETEC. The project is in collaboration with structural engineers at the Department of Mechanical and Structural Engineering at the University of Trento, who are currently developing models to study the conditions of the tower based on the data provided by the system.

As covered in a previous post the paper describing this work received the Best Paper Award in the SPOTS track at IPSN09

A live data feed from the sensors deployed is available, requires java enabled browser and some ports open in the network.

More information about the project can be found here. ]]> http://www.wsnblog.com/2009/06/04/lost-of-teamwork-in-trentino-alto-adige/feed/ 0 http://www.wsnblog.com/2009/05/11/scalable-wireless-networks/ http://www.wsnblog.com/2009/05/11/scalable-wireless-networks/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 12:51:00 +0000 Claro Noda http://www.wsnblog.com/?p=1432 With the explosive proliferation of mobile communication and wireless computing devices, the scalability property is becoming an increasingly popular and important issue in wireless communication research, as it has been recognized as one of the key features for supporting pervasive networking scenarios.

The International Journal of Communication Networks and Distributed Systems (IJCNDS)  has a call for papers for a special issue on “Scalable Wireless Neworks”.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together the state-of-the-art research contributions that address the major opportunities and challenges of scalable wireless communication and networking, with emphasis on the design, analysis and evaluation of new techniques and novel application scenarios.

Specific topics of interest and CFP are available here

Important Dates
Paper submission due: 1 October, 2009
Notification of acceptance: 15 January, 2010
Camera-ready version due: 1 March, 2010

The former one had two nominations: one best paper award and a best student paper award, which correponded to: Secure and Highly-Available Aggregation Queries in Large-Scale Sensor Networks via Set Sampling by Haifeng Yu (National University of Singapore) and On Hierarchical Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks by Konrad Iwanicki et al (VU Amsterdam), respectively.

On the SPOTS track the award corresponds to Monitoring Heritage Buildings with Wireless Sensor Networks: The Torre Aquila Deployment by M. Ceriotti et al (Bruno Kessler Foundation / University of Trento / TRETEC)

Check out our previous post from EWSN’09 and go figure who made two awards in a row this year!

Congrats to all the authors for the good work.

Data streaming in real time is available online in XML format (data rate is about 1 packet per minute and needs to be refreshed to see updates)
The overall aim of the Karbon Footprinting demonstrator is to provide a opportunity for small to medium scale carbon footprinting. In brief, a wide range of sensor technologies will be used to measure and analyse the energy consumption, activity, and waste management profiles of individuals and groups of individuals in both home and small-office environments.
The Karbon Footprinting Demonstrator will provide a platform collaboration across a number of different groups within the core CLARITY CSET, as well as providing an opportunity for existing and new partners to participate in a substantial development opportunity.

For more info about the Karbon Footprinting, send an email to ruzzelli@ucd.ie
For more information click here

Waspmote from Libelium

Less than 4 weeks left for the results of the sensor survey launched by Libelium to be published. It is the first time a manufacturer ask the future users to take part in the design of a wireless sensor platform.

As far as now, more than 200 researchers and developers have participied, sending the list of sensors they would like to find integrated in the new mote developed by the spanish brand. The sensor platform will be released under the name of Waspmote

As an advance of the upcoming results, the Libelium’s CTO, David Gascón pointed out the special interest shown in the gas sensors (CO, CO2, O2), motion sensors (accelerometer, tilt, vibration) and sensors for agricultural and environmental applications.

You can still take part of the Sensor Survey during the current month of May. There will be a prize draw for a Waspmote Developer Kit among all the participants.

On 1st June the results will be published in the Libelium RSS, the Newsletter bulletin and of course, in a special post in our blog.