Long-term, environmental sampling by networks of embedded sensors has long been a vision of the computer-science community. This vision has subsequently driven much of the research over the past decade around low-power communications and network protocols. Despite these advances however, almost all existing applications of sensor networks still hold to the traditional “data logger” paradigm, where a user preselects a fixed operating point and then deploys. This talk will present an overview of recent work around changing the way, long-term sensor networks can be used. We propose a revised architecture for environmental sensor networks, where nodes can adapt their behavior based on the amount of energy available to harvest from the environment and within the constraints of a user-policy. An overview of current work around wireless camera networks will also be presented, where smart energy management protocols will become critical for long-term use.
Speaker Biography
Tim Wark is a Senior Research Scientist in the Autonomous Systems Laboratory at CSIRO ICT Centre, Australia. He has worked in a variety of projects around sensor networks ranging from wearable body sensors for indoor monitoring, to long-term, environmental sensing. His current areas of focus are around adaptive energy management of sensor networks and in-network processing of multimedia information. He currently leads a team of scientists and engineers developing the next generation of these long-term, wireless sensing technologies. Tim is a recipient of the CSIRO Julius Career Award, and is currently based at UC Berkeley as a Visiting Scholar with the Wireless and Embedded Systems Laboratory.