Sensor Network Topologies and Design Considerations
Michael J. McGrath, Cliodhna Ní Scanaill · Apress eBooks · 2013
Connecting the devices in our lives, from toasters to fitness devices, to each other and to the Internet is the fundamental principle of the Internet of Things (IoT). Enabling this connectivity requires at the very least a direct connection to the Internet, but often data is routed and processed at a local network stage before being passed to the Internet. Some sensor networks are not connected to the Internet at all, and their data is simply aggregated and displayed at a local aggregation point, such as a smart phone or PC. The topology of the sensor network depends largely on the overall system application: a personal area network may simply stream data from all sensors to a single central aggregator (star topology), whereas a home monitoring network may use a self-healing mesh topology. The different sensor topologies and the applications to which they are most suited are discussed in this chapter. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.