Department of Electronics and Home Automation, Furniture and Wood Technology Centre, Yecla 30510, Murcia, Spain.
Sensors (Basel). 2012;12(5):6463-96. doi: 10.3390/s120506463. Epub 2012 May 16.
The extensions of the environment with the integration of sensing systems in any space, in conjunction with ubiquitous computing are enabling the so-called Smart Space Sensor Networks. This new generation of networks are offering full connectivity with any object, through the Internet of Things (IoT) and/or the Web, i.e., the Web of Things. These connectivity capabilities are making it feasible to sense the behaviours of people at home and act accordingly. These sensing systems must be integrated within typical elements found at home such as furniture. For that reason, this work considers furniture as an interesting element for the transparent location of sensors. Furniture is a ubiquitous object, i.e., it can be found everywhere at home or the office, and it can integrate and hide the sensors of a network. This work addresses the lack of an exhaustive study of the effect of furniture on signal losses. In addition an easy-to-use tool for estimating the robustness of the communication channel among the sensor nodes and gateways is proposed. Specifically, the losses in a sensor network signal due to the materials found within the communication link are evaluated. Then, this work proposes a software tool that gathers the obtained results and is capable of evaluating the impact of a given set of materials on the communications. This tool also provides a mechanism to optimize the sensor network deployments during the definition of smart spaces. Specifically, it provides information such as: maximum distances between sensor nodes, most suitable type of furniture to integrate sensors, or battery life of sensor nodes. This tool has been validated empirically in the lab, and it is currently being used by several enterprise partners of the Technological Centre of Furniture and Wood in the southeast of Spain.
环境的扩展与任何空间中感测系统的集成，结合无处不在的计算，使所谓的智能空间传感器网络成为可能。这种新一代网络通过物联网（IoT）和/或 Web（即物联网）提供与任何对象的完全连接。这些连接能力使得可以在家中感知人们的行为并做出相应的响应。这些感测系统必须集成在家庭中常见的典型元素中，例如家具。出于这个原因，这项工作认为家具是用于传感器透明定位的有趣元素。家具是一种无处不在的物体，即它可以在家庭或办公室的任何地方找到，并且可以集成和隐藏网络的传感器。这项工作解决了缺乏对家具对信号损耗影响的全面研究的问题。此外，还提出了一种用于估计传感器节点和网关之间通信信道鲁棒性的易于使用的工具。具体来说，评估了通信链路内材料对传感器网络信号损耗的影响。然后，这项工作提出了一个软件工具，它可以收集获得的结果，并能够评估给定材料集对通信的影响。该工具还提供了一种在定义智能空间时优化传感器网络部署的机制。具体来说，它提供了以下信息：传感器节点之间的最大距离、最适合集成传感器的家具类型或传感器节点的电池寿命。该工具已在实验室中进行了实证验证，目前正在西班牙东南部的家具和木材技术中心的几个企业合作伙伴中使用。
