Section: Application Domains

Wireless sensor networks in industrial applications and Internet of Things

Concerning wireless sensor networks, WSNs, we tackle the three following issues:

• Energy efficiency is a key property in wireless sensor networks. Various techniques contribute to save energy of battery-equipped sensor nodes. To name a few, they are: energy efficient routing protocols, node activity scheduling, adjustment of transmision power, reduction of protocols overhead, reduction of data generated and transmitted. In the OCARI network, an industrial wireless sensor network, we have designed and implemented an energy efficient routing protocol and a node activity scheduling algorithm allowing router nodes to sleep. We have applied a cross-layering approach allowing the optimization of MAC and network protocols taking into account the application requirements and the environment in which the network operates. We have observed the great benefit obtained with node activity scheduling. In networks with low activity, opportunistic strategies are used to address low duty cycles.

• Large scale WSNs constitute another challenge. Large autonomous wireless sensors in the internet of the things need very well tuned algorithms. Self-organization is considered as a key element in tomorrow's Internet architecture. A major challenge concerning the integration of self-organized networks in the Internet is the accomplishment of light weight network protocols in large ad hoc environments.

• Multichannel WSNs provide an opportunity:

  • to increase the parallelism between transmissions. Hence, it reduces the data gathering delays and improves the time consitency of gathered data.

  • to increase the robustness against interferences and perturbations possibly caused by the coexistence of other wireless networks.