Advancing profiling sensors with a wireless approach

Sensors (Basel). 2012 Nov 22;12(12):16144-67. doi: 10.3390/s121216144.

Abstract

The notion of a profiling sensor was first realized by a Near-Infrared (N-IR) retro-reflective prototype consisting of a vertical column of wired sparse detectors. This paper extends that prior work and presents a wireless version of a profiling sensor as a collection of sensor nodes. The sensor incorporates wireless sensing elements, a distributed data collection and aggregation scheme, and an enhanced classification technique. In this novel approach, a base station pre-processes the data collected from the sensor nodes and performs data re-alignment. A back-propagation neural network was also developed for the wireless version of the N-IR profiling sensor that classifies objects into the broad categories of human, animal or vehicle with an accuracy of approximately 94%. These enhancements improve deployment options as compared with the first generation of wired profiling sensors, possibly increasing the application scenarios for such sensors, including intelligent fence applications.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Humans
  • Neural Networks, Computer*
  • Spectroscopy, Near-Infrared
  • Telemetry
  • Wireless Technology*