WSN APPLICATION PAPERS

1) Challenges in Habitat Monitoring The first challenge in the habitat monitoring is disturbance caused by the human invasion. Even 15 minutes visit to cormorant colony can result up to 20% mortality among eggs and chicks in a particular breeding year. Repeated visits will lead to complete abandonment of the colony. So Sensors are to be deployed before the beginning of the breeding season or sensitive period. In the case of monitoring g Leachs Storm Petrels (a type of seabird) in Great Duck Island, the requirements are given below 1. Internet connectivity: As it was a remote habitat monitoring, the sensors deployed in the birds burrows are to be connected with internet. 2. Batches of sensors networks to be connected among themselves.(Tiered) 3. Longevity: As the requirement is to study the behavior pattern of breed pair during the breeding season, the nodes to be operated for 9 months period. But seasonal changes may lengthen the period of monitoring. So the power requirements to be planned carefully. 4. In the case of renewable energy sources like solar power, the seasonal changes may affect the power availability. 5. Habitat monitoring infrastructure must be inconspicuous 6. Archiving and efficient data mining must be planned 7. The management of data and power requirements at each level of the architecture has to be planned carefully for example the power required by the individual sensor nodes are less comparing with the nodes near the gateways and base stations, the power required by the radio unit is more. So most of the time they will be in sleep mode to save energy and deciding which modes to be in sleep mode are planned. Because some of the node to be in awake mode so that it will sense the presence of an event and awake other nodes. 8. The sensor unit is enclosed in an acrylic enclosure to protect from the environment factors and the size is not sufficient to keep inside the burrows In the case of the study done at Cobb Hill farm in Vermont, the challenges the researchers faced are: 1. Equipment failure: some of the equipment failed after the deployment and it is observed that average life span of the equipment are 4.5 over the period of 15 days. 2. Poorer propagation of radio waves in the indoor study 3. Designing the sensor node to choose right batteries and enclosures to designing the collars that go on to the animals. Initially when the antenna was made stick on to the back of the animal and they were rubbed against the wall or chewed by other animals. So it was made flat into the collar and affects the performance. The weight of the collar also to be a criteria to be considered.

4. Approval from the animal ethics committee to be obtained first before performing the study. 5. Most of the concern is about reducing the power requirement of the devises. In the above two experiments the architectural design of deploying the sensor nodes to collect data and each patch is having Gateways and they are all connect with Base station to the internet and are collected and analyzed by the researchers remotely is impressed me. The way the researchers designed carefully to reduce the power requirement is also impressed me. 2. Agriculture is an important activity, studying domesticated animals and environment helps to improve agriculture. Also monitoring the soil moisture helps to conserve water. Some plants like red wine are climate sensitive, so monitoring them helps to give good yields. In the case of Birds study, studying the behavioral pattern helps the life scientist to know about the extinction of certain species and to stop the extinction. Extinction of species causes severe climate changes and causes natural disasters like earthquake, Tsunami and melting of glaciers. Challenges faced by the researchers are mainly power requirements of the sensor nodes, disturbance to the species, the designing of hardware, software to accomplish the study. Climate changes does affect the performance like it lengthen the period of study and in turn reduces the battery life.