Section: Application Domains

Spontaneous Wireless Networks applications

The advances in hardware development have made possible the miniaturization of micro-electro-mechanical systems and consequently, the development of sensor networks. The combination of inexpensive, autonomous, low-power sensing, and compact devices has established the viability of deploying large and dense wireless sensor networks (WSNs) able to sense the physical world. By essence, such networks require fully decentralized solutions in which the load is evenly balanced in the system, merely because participating entities have limited in power, storage and communication capabilities. Thus one of the applications of Spontaneous Wireless Networks has been traditionally such wireless sensor networks, where some typical applications are to continuously monitor data (real-time data collection to a sink), and to be able to do manage network after deployment (for instance reflashing nodes with firmware other the air). The challenge is to operate this with standards (such as IP), constrained devices (battery, memory, power, ...), which requires sophisticated protocols, with reliable and tested implementations.

The applications of the more recent “Internet of Object” are much broader, since they literally consists of any application running on any object (in the industrial factories, in living spaces, ...). While some of the constraints in wireless sensor networks are a still present in IoT in general, what characterizes IoT is the heterogeneity of the platforms.