Article on building sensor networks

Microwaves&RF has a great article on building sensor networks:

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer great promise for information capture and processing in both commercial and military applications. Successful system design and deployment includes understanding RF channel characteristics, and the choice of modulation scheme on power consumption. Such factors ultimately determine the available range and data rate of a WSN, as well as cost and battery lifetime.

The increasing miniaturization of RF devices and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and the advances in wireless technologies, has generated a great deal of research interest in the area of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Sensor networks provide a promising infrastructure for gathering information about parameters of the physical world.1-3 Such networks have many applications in military and civilian environments.

Read more here

Nice mini tutorial

Here is a nice mini tutorial on Wireless Sensor Networks:
Wireless Sensor Networks article at Web-hosters

And here is a followup article on sensor network security
Wireless Sensor Network security

Video over motes

Video is one of those applications that is becoming almost requisite for any public sector agency. From DOTs to municipalities the drive towards security and 'watching' infrastructuer assets has pushed video to the forefront. Let's face it. We are visual creatures and in todays age of satellite TV and 200 channels at home it's only natural that we want that video now from the road.

Here is an intersting story of a researcher at Virginia Tech looking at this very issue with regards to motes:
Wireless Video Network Research

It is probably a long way off from implementation, but gotta start somewhere. A very novel idea, how to use the mesh networking of the mote architecture to transmit video.

A lot of the work I have done recently centers around wireless architectures and using them as a communications medium for IP video.


Basically you create point to point wireless links and connect them in serial to develop a virtual ethernet cable down a highway right of way.

One link:


now in series:



You can even add Access Point- Hot spot coverage for mobile connectivity.



This is an actual snapshot from a camera on Rt 460 in Blacksburg, VA.

Smart Road

The Smart Road is a controlled transportation testbed here at Virginia Tech


It is one of a kind in the world. I have a wireless testbed installed on the road that allows me to test out many different point to point and serial point to point configurations.

I'll be installing a Remote Wireless Sensor Network on the Smart Road and interfacing the sensor mesh network with either fiber optic network installed on the road or my wireless IP backbone that is out there.

Getting Started

This BLOG is going to cover my exploration of Remote Wireless Sensor Networks and their application towards Transportation.


Currently, I do a lot of work in researching wireless Internet Applications towards transportation. Basically taking off the shelf equipment and using helping transportation agencies such as VDOT use them to meet their needs.

Remote sensor networks are one of the hottest technologies out there right now. And right now seems like a good time to get involved in the growth of the technology. It's one of those enabaling technologies that by itself is not much, but it is the applications that make it so amazing. A computer is just a bunch of silicon until the applications bring it to life.

One of the keys right now is trying to figure out how to take this off the shelf technology and determine and develop some real-world transportation applications.