TSSG Organises Dagstuhl Seminar on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications

TSSG's recently nominated Principal Investigator and Director of research in Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Dr.-Ing. Tom Pfeifer, co-chairs together with Prof. Alois Ferscha from University Linz, Austria, and Prof. Stephan Olariu, Old Dominion University Norfolk, VA, a Dagstuhl seminar on Wireless Sensor Networks and applications, March 14-19, 2004.

The International Conference and Research Center for Computer Science in Dagstuhl, Germany, hosts the renown Dagstuhl Seminars, each providing a full week of flexible programs, such as lectures, discussions in groups, work and demonstrations, for up to 40 researchers of international standing in the respective field. The proposals for Dagstuhl seminars are submitted by prominent research scientists, reviewed and approved by the Scientific Directorate, participation is by personal invitation.

The topic of this week's seminar discusses the development of low-power devices that integrate general-purpose computing with multi-purpose sensing and wireless communications capabilities. It is expected that these small devices, referred to as sensor nodes, will be mass-produced and deployed, making their production cost negligible. Individual sensor nodes have a small, non-renewable power supply and, once deployed, must work unattended. For most applications we envision a massive deployment of sensor nodes, perhaps in the hundreds or even thousands. Aggregating sensor nodes into sophisticated computational and communication infrastructures, called sensor networks, will have a significant impact on a wide array of applications ranging from military, to scientific, to industrial, to health-care, to domestic, establishing ubiquitous wireless sensor networks that will pervade society redefining the way in which we live and work. Sensor networks are currently being established as a specific sub-task of the rapidly unfolding area of ubiquitous and pervasive computing.