Applying Complex Event Processing and extending Sensor Web Enablement to a health care sensor network architecture

Abstract

The limited reuse of middleware components for wireless sensor networking projects has driven interest in emerging standards from the Sensor Web Enablement Working Group which offers methods to virtualize sensor data into a common, self-describing format, using access mechanisms based on HTTP. Using these standards, applications are able to discover and access different sensor offerings, automatically understand the data format used and even specify conditions in the sensor data. This paper examines how an existing sensor network platform in the health care domain can make use of these standards and examines the possibility of extending the Sensor Alert Service with a richer set of functions. Concepts taken from Complex Event Processing engines are explored in the context of this particular health care platform, where it is shown that there are clear advantages to extending the standard. © 2009 Institute for Computer Sciences, Social-Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.