Wireless Sensor Network
Current Applications

Budi Mulyawan, Wei Sheng Yong, Xuan Thanh, Nirupama Bulusu
Supervisor: Associate Professor Sanjay Jha

Bush Fire Monitoring – FireBug

Collecting real time data from wildfires is important for life safety considerations, and allows predictive analysis of evolving fire behavior. One way to collect such data is to deploy sensors in the wild fire environment. FireBugs are small, wireless sensors (motes) based on TinyOS that self-organize into networks for collecting real time data in wild fire environments. The FireBug system combines state-of-the-art sensor hardware running TinyOS with standard, off-the-shelf World Wide Web and database technology for allowing users to rapidly deploy FireBugs and monitor network behavior.

Fire Board/Mote

Each mote has sufficient power, radio communication and processing capabilities to support location and thermal sensors and data handling. Along with geographic position, motes measure:

• Humidity
• Temperature
• Light Intensity
• Acceleration

Data Flow

Smart Building

Minor earth tremors, for example, may not cause visible damage but they can create hidden cracks in support columns -- cracks that could eventually fail during a higher-magnitude quake. Even after a large earthquake, when beam buckling and structural bruises are likely, a building's true condition can only be determined by tearing down tons of sheetrock.

Therefore, it’s often desirable to know a building's structural integrity at any moment as well as intelligently prognosticate how it will behave in the future.

Smart Dust Motes, tiny and inexpensive sensors developed by UC Berkeley electrical engineers, are enabling scientists to attain both of these goals.

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