Dynamic Sensor Management: Extending Sensor Web for Near Real-Time Mobile Sensor Integration in Dynamic Scenarios

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are often composed of a wide range of sensor nodes, which may vary greatly in their type of hardware platform, as well as their sensing and mobility capabilities. The ability of a sensor to move is a particularly important feature in dynamic scenarios, since mobile sensors can fill the gap caused by the failures of those that are stationary, and thus extend the lifetime and span of a WSN. However, there remains the problems of intersensory communication in the field when integrating mobile sensors into the Sensor Web in dynamic scenarios since it does not have the necessary interoperability for automatically managing the different types of sensor data and activities involved in such scenarios. This paper tackles this problem by adopting an approach consisting of an enhanced messaging protocol and a dynamic sensor management component. In validating the proposal, two different realistic scenarios were simulated to evaluate the achieved results in terms of interoperability and performance. The results provided evidence that the proposal complies with Sensor Web standards as well as being suitable for near real-time data publication, and is thus able to support applications in dynamic scenarios.