Emerging technologies, sensor web

Abstract

To respond to the challenge of validation of coarse-scale remote sensing retrieval products such as soil moisture, a generalized wireless sensor network architecture has been developed. This architecture can be scaled to large-scale outdoor wireless sensor webs with flexible placement, scheduling, and power management schemes. The latest implementation of this architecture has been termed “Ripple-2” (with Ripple-1 being the first generation of this architecture). Due to its advantages, this architecture can be extended not just for soil moisture but for other sensing applications by making it flexible enough for other processor platforms and wireless technologies. Such applications can include any environmental monitoring application that has an extensive network deployed over a large area. The high degree of robustness, energy efficiency, and reliability of Ripple-2 are achieved under the assumption of low duty cycles (e.g., sensor measurements every 10–20 min) and data latencies from seconds to minutes. The Ripple-2 architecture can be considered a milestone in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) because of its specialization for low duty cycle and data-centric applications, breaking well-established concepts for WSNs. Without increasing the costs, the energy performance of Ripple-2 nodes is significantly superior compared to any similar WSN/telemetry solution. In fact, even non-rechargeable batteries can now be considered as a cost-effective option. However, technological enhancements can provide the path to turn Ripple-2 into a generic WSN solution.