Special Issue "Networked Sensors and Actuators"

Guest Editor
Dr. Raul Marin
University Jaume I of Castellon (Spain), Department of Engineering and Computer Sciences, 12006 Castellon, Spain
Website: http://rmarin.act.uji.es
E-Mail:
Phone: +34 964 72 82 56
Interests: networked sensors and actuators; remote control of devices using internet, internet protocols; e-education contribution

Guest Editor
Dr. Jose M. Claver
Departament d'Informàtica, Universitat de València, Avd. Vicente Andrés Estellés, s/n 46100 Burjassot, Valencia, Spain
Website: http://www.uv.es/jclaver/
E-Mail:
Phone: +34 96 354 37 38
Fax: +34 96 354 47 68
Interests: high speed networks; QoS; internet protocols; networked sensors and actuators; embedded systems and reconfigurable computing

Submission Information

All manuscripts should be submitted to futureinternet@mdpi.com with a copy to the Guest Editor. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Internet is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first few issues, to be published in 2009 and 2010, the Article Processing Charges (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

Type of Paper: Article
Authors: Nancy El Rachkidy, Alexandre Guitton, Michel Misson
Title: Improving QoS in Wireless Sensor Networks using Time-Division and Cross-Layering
Affiliation: Institute: LIMOS; E-Mail: alexandre.guitton@univ-bpclermont.fr (A.G.)
Abstract: Multi-hop wireless sensor networks deployed nowadays are traditionally operated according to a single pair constituted of one MAC and one network protocols. In this work, we divide time into periods and we run a different pair of MAC and network protocols in each period in order to enable multiple QoS. We study this time-division mechanism and the dimensioning of the periods depending on the MAC and the network parameters. We also study how to increase network bandwidth by dispatching pending packets in different periods. Then, we propose a joint MAC/routing protocol that is able to use different periods at each hop. Simulation and experimental results on a real sensor testbed show that our approach outperforms the traditional one in terms of QoS and energy saving.
Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, Cross-Layering, Time-Division, QoS, MAC layer, Network layer, sensor testbed

Type of Paper: Review
Authors: Sebahattin Topal, İsmet Erkmen, Aydan M. Erkmen, E-Mail: stopal@metu.edu.tr (S.T.)
Title: Networked Mobile Sensors: A Survey from Sensor Networks to Mobile Sensor Networks Perspective
Abstract: Sensor networks are used to collect and propagate
environmental data for cooperatively monitoring and controlling physical environments. Developments of the last decade on computation, communication, sensing and actuation technologies led to mobile sensor networks profiting from the advantage of mobility in gathering more information. Networked robotics is an active research area that combines robotic and network technology. They have applications in a variety of fields such as wide-area surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue in disaster environments, planetary exploration, and many others. Since decentralization bear more advantage than centralization, dynamic multi-robot teams can cooperatively perform tasks more efficiently than a single robot or can execute tasks that a single one cannot accomplish. Networked robots also result in enhanced performance in area coverage having the ability of fault tolerance due to coordination between robots and cooperation with humans. Considerable research has been focused at power limitations, coverage complications, deployment, simultaneously localization and mapping, path planning, coordination of the robot network and goal oriented exploration based on a percolation model for victim search operation in the unknown environments. In this paper, we provide a comparative survey of existing approaches based on the span of their focus and their advantages and disadvantages brought to the field of interest. This paper also provides a new perspective to exploration by developing goal oriented exploration and compares our novel percolation guided exploration with existing frontier based exploration approaches. New abilities arise frequently with the introduction of new hardware, software and biomimetic approaches. So, there exist many future scientific challenges in the networked robot research area such as biologically inspired self-organizing robot networks, completely decentralized controller networks, scalability, heterogeneous robot networks which can cooperate with humans and intelligent environments. In this paper, we survey and comparatively discuss the current state of networked robotics, and dwell on future challenges.
Keywords: Networked robot systems; survey

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Sensor Network Design for Complex Systems
Authors: Abbas Chamseddine ¹ and Hassan Noura ²
Affiliation: ¹ Dept. of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, Concordia University, 1455 Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada; E-Mail: abbasc@encs.concordia.ca (A.C.)
² Department of Electrical Engineering, United Arab Emirates University, P.O. Box 17555, Al-Ain, UAE
Abstract: This work addresses the problem of instrumentation for complex systems. Complex systems are large scale dynamic systems with a large number of inputs and outputs. The objective is to determine the number and the location of the sensors to be employed to verify the observability of the system and to detect and isolate actuator faults. The strategy is based on the breakdown of complex systems into interconnected subsystems and the formulation of the instrumentation problem as nonlinear binary optimization problem to optimize the number of sensors, the cost or the reliability of the sensor network.
Keywords: Instrumentation; Sensor network; Complex systems; Observability; Fault detection and isolation

Type of Paper: Review
Title: Wireless Sensors Network in Industrial Environment: an Overview, Requirements and the Development of OCARI Technology
Authors: Tuan Dang, Pascale Minet, Michel Misson, Alexandre Guitton
Affiliation: Institutes: EDF, INRIA, LIMOS; E-Mail: tuan.dang@edf.fr (T.D.)
Abstract: With the advent of IEEE 802.15.4 standard, talking about the use of wireless sensors network in industrial environment begins to make sense. However, there are a lot of competitive wireless sensor network technologies that are all based on IEEE 802.15.4. This situation constitutes a barrier for the accelerated adoption of wireless sensors network technology in industrial environment. Moreover, technologies like ZigBee, WirelessHART and ISA100.11a were designed with incompatible medium access method over the original IEEE 802.15.4 MAC. In industrial environment like that is found in power plant, RF is a precious and limited resource that must be optimized so that incompatible wireless sensor network technologies are not acceptable. Facing such situation, the OCARI wireless sensor network technology is developed with and for industrial end users. In this paper, we propose first to give an overview of the market situation, and then the overall requirements and the development of OCARI wireless sensor network will be described.

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Node Coloring and Color Conflict Detection in the OCARI Wireless Sensor Network
Authors: Pascale Minet et al.
Affiliation: Institute: INRIA; E-Mail: pascale.minet@inria.fr
Abstract: In wireless sensor networks, energy efficiency is achieved by making nodes sleep. In this paper, we present the combination of SERENA, a new node activity coloring and scheduling algorithm based on three-hop coloring, with TDMA/CA, a collision avoidance MAC protocol. We show that the combination of these two protocols enables substantial energy benefits. We also show how the MAC layer can detect color conflicts, and cope with them at the cost of a slightly reduced throughput. Then, we discuss about the tradeoff between requesting SERENA to solve the color conflicts and dealing with them at the MAC layer. The combination of SERENA and TDMA/CA is evaluated through simulations on realistic topologies, using a channel model that allows unidirectional links.
Keywords: node coloring; capture effect; MAC protocol; collision avoidance; wireless sensor network

Type of Paper: Article
Title: Energy efficient routing and node activity scheduling in the OCARI wireless sensor network
Authors: Pascale Minet et al.; E-Mail: pascale.minet@inria.fr
Affiliation: Institute: INRIA