An Evaluation on Sensor Network Technologies for AMI Associated Mudslide Warning System

Abstract

In order to detect occurrences of mudslides, a mudslide warning system has to address three major issues: sensor sensitivity, coverage area, and deployment cost. With the emergence of AMI, which is considered as the fundamental step towards Smart Grid, a mudslide warning system is able to utilize AMI communication network to provide a broad coverage at a relatively low deployment cost. However, realization of the sensor networks for this AMI associated mudslide warning system needs to satisfy many constraints. In addition to the design factors identified by previous studies, such as fault tolerance, scalability, cost, hardware, topology change, environment, and power consumption, AMI brings limitations that come along with the electricity grid infrastructure. This paper studies the state of the art of current communication technologies in sensor networks, and identifies which of them meet the requirements of AMI associated mudslide warning system.