Implementation-based approach for designing practical sensor network systems

Wireless sensor network technologies are expected to be a key technology to support various innovative applications in the future ubiquitous computing environment. So far, the mainstream of sensor network research has been focused on simulation-based development of battery-aware communication protocols. However, when we apply sensor network technologies to practical applications such as environmental monitoring or factory automation, we find a lot of practical problems that are not considered in simulation-based approach. We believe that finding and solving such practical problems are quite important for deploying sensor network technologies beyond laboratory use. From this point of view, we have been trying to find such problems through various implementations of sensor network system for several years. This paper describes our opinions of designing sensor network system and introduces our approaches for developing practical systems.