Going all the way - Detecting and transmitting events with wireless sensor networks in logistics

Abstract

The logistics domain constitutes a promising application area for wireless sensor network technology. Wireless sensor nodes can be deployed for example in containers or trucks' load areas to monitor environmental parameters relevant to the condition of transported goods in real time. Exploiting their computation and communication capabilities, wireless sensor nodes can locally detect the occurrence of critical situations, so-called events, and send corresponding alarm messages to responsible decision makers via the network and corresponding gateway nodes in real time. Within this paper, we present a fully working solution and corresponding prototypical implementation of how such real-time monitoring and event detection can be realized in a context-dependent and user-specific way. As such a system requires transmitting alarm messages and sensor data from the wireless sensor network deployment to users' backend systems, we furthermore explore means to interconnect wireless sensor nodes and smartphones. In particular, we present findings from field tests concerning the link quality of such connections for different technological approaches for which we realized prototypical implementations.