Ubiquitous Sensor Networking for Development (USN4D): an application to pollution monitoring

Sensors (Basel). 2012;12(1):391-414. doi: 10.3390/s120100391. Epub 2012 Jan 4.

Abstract

This paper presents a new Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) Architecture to be used in developing countries and reveals its usefulness by highlighting some of its key features. In complement to a previous ITU proposal, our architecture referred to as "Ubiquitous Sensor Network for Development (USN4D)" integrates in its layers features such as opportunistic data dissemination, long distance deployment and localisation of information to meet the requirements of the developing world. Besides describing some of the most important requirements for the sensor equipment to be used in a USN4D setting, we present the main features and experiments conducted using the "WaspNet" as one of the wireless sensor deployment platforms that meets these requirements. Furthermore, building upon "WaspNet" platform, we present an application to Air pollution Monitoring in the city of Cape Town, in South Africa as one of the first steps towards building community wireless sensor networks (CSN) in the developing world using off-the-shelf sensor equipment.

Keywords: environment monitoring; long distance wireless sensor networks; ubiquitous sensor networking; wireless sensor networks.

MeSH terms

  • Air Pollution / analysis*
  • Computer Communication Networks / instrumentation*
  • Computer Security
  • Environmental Monitoring / instrumentation*
  • Environmental Monitoring / methods*
  • Gases / analysis
  • Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted
  • South Africa
  • Time Factors
  • Wireless Technology

Substances

  • Gases