Heterogenenous Sensor Networks Design for Aged Care
Heng Tiang Cheng · 2006
Designing complex applications using wireless sensor networks require solving unique challenges for researchers. The reliability, and accuracy of data collection is important in providing suitable information to care providers. Heterogeneity, and co-relating data from a variety of sources, termed sensor fusion, can provide a mechanism for validating information. Software frameworks need to be created to facilitate these interactions between sensor networks, and the end user. This dissertation presents a framework for heterogeneous sensor networks to operate. We implement web services to allow sensors to communicate with a database over an IP network. This is very useful for scaling to a large number of distributed sensors, and allows sensor systems to be mobile. Using SOAP allows the database to be stored at an offsite location. We investigate the capabilities and limitations of RFID, motion detection, and a location tracking systems. We examine the methods of combining sensor data, and evaluate the functional ways to make use of this data. The framework is modified to collect data from these sensors, and process them. Finally, we discuss software design issues we’ve encountered, and the solutions we used in context for aged care.