A wireless sensor network has been designed and deployed to gather data from nodes on and inside glaciers. This paper describes the solutions to power management, radio communications, management and discusses the performance of the final system. 18 months of data have now been received, which provide an insight not only into the glacier’s behaviour but on the design decisions. The system uses custom PIC-based sensor nodes and an ARM-based base station which controls weather and differential GPS. Different versions have been installed in Norway from 2003-5 and this paper describes the lessons learnt from coping with the extreme conditions found in glaciers.

The complete paper is available here.

A very interesting paper on “Designing Wireless Sensor Networks as a Shared Resource for Sustainable Development” is available here.

In the paper, the authors (from UCLA, Center for Embedded Network Sensing) highlight their experience in developing and deploying water quality monitoring wireless sensor networks in Bangladesh and California.

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.

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.

An interesting introductive presentation on Wireless Sensor Networks, written as part of his PhD Programme, is
available at Piero Campanelli’s website.

Tiny computers that constantly monitor ecosystems, buildings and even human bodies could turn science on its head. Declan Butler investigates.

“What are you doing in the lab? Why aren’t you out working in the field?” These are not the sorts of question you usually put to your computer. But they should be, according to the proponents of a new type of information technology sometimes known as ’smart dust’.

The complete article is available here.