Real-Time Systems

WASP - Wirelessly Accessible Sensor Populations (EU IST FP6)

EU IST IP coordinated by Philips Research, The Netherlands 2006 - 2010

Category:EU-Projects
Status:Finished
Coordinator:Philips Research
Time Period:2006 - 2010
Persons:Gerhard Fohler, Ramon Serna Oliver, Ivan Shcherbakov, Cuong Viet Ngo
Institutes:CSEM, Philips Research, Technical University of Denmark, EPFL, IMEC-NL, RWTHAachen, CRF, INRIA, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, SAP, Wageningen UR, CEFRIEL, HTN, Imperial College London, Uni-Paderborn, STMicroelectronics, Microsoft

Description:

An important class of collaborating objects is represented by the myriad of wireless sensors, which will constitute the infrastructure for the ambient intelligence vision. The academic world actively investigates the technology for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Industry is reluctant to use these results coming from academic research. A major cause is the magnitude of the mismatch between research at the application level and the node and network level.

The WASP project aims at narrowing this mismatch by covering the whole range from basic hardware, sensors, processor, communication, over the packaging of the nodes, the organisation of the nodes, towards the information distribution and a selection of applications. The emphasis in the project lays in the self-organisation and the services, which link the application to the sensor network. Research into the nodes themselves is needed because a strong link lies between the required flexibility and the hardware design. Research into the applications is necessary because the properties of the required service will influence the configuration of both sensor network and application for optimum efficiency and functionality. All inherent design decisions cannot be handled in isolation as they depend on the hardware costs involved in making a sensor and the market size for sensors of a given type.

Three business areas, road transport, elderly care, and herd control, are selected for their societal significance and large range of requirements, to validate the WASP results.

The general goal of the project is the provision of a complete system view for building large populations of collaborating objects. The system incorporates networking protocols for wireless sensor nodes to hide the individual nodes from the application

The tangible results of the project are: (1) A consistent chain of energy-sensitive software components, (2) Sets of cross optimised software stacks, (3) Benchmarks and a set of measurements on energy- and code- efficiency, (4) Rules for the design of configurable sensor nodes, and (5) A prototype implementation in two of the three chosen business areas

The consortium consists of six industrial partners, one SME, six large research institutes and six universities. All of them have a proven experience with WSNs. The impact on European industry and research comes from the provision of an European alternative to the wireless sensor nodes originating in the US .
The WASP results will be well suited for adoption by SMEs. The consortium defines an active programme to approach the appropriate SMEs and to familiarise them with the WASP results.