WSN Update

According to a recent article by ABI Research wireless sensors can now connect to 802.11 WiFi networks. Up until now, this was not considered possible for wireless sensors because of the large power requirements of WiFi. A normal battery that typically powers a sensor node would be exhausted in hours powering a WiFi radio. But now, thanks to new products from Gain Span, WiFi sensor nodes can achieve years of life with a typical battery. Gain Span develops highly a integrated system on chip that provides years of life and intelligent power management for battery operated sensor devices.

The impact of this is significant. Development of Wireless Sensor applications can be drastically simplified leading to quicker time to market and lower development costs. Instead of learning complicated mesh networking protocols, applications can connect to wireless sensors via TCP using your normal everyday wireless network.

It will definitely be interesting to see what kind of impact this has on proprietary sensor network companies like Dust and Crossbow. If you ask me, now that the power problem has been solved, its a no brainer - WiFi all the way.

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Labels: Sensor Networking, wireless, WSN

EETimes.com has a nice article today about how Wireless is, without question, going to be the next explosive technology boom - similar to what happened with PCs.

This definitely seems to be the trend because wireless is becoming so pervasive. It is becoming a critical component of our everyday lives. It is found so many product - phones, PDAs, video games. And it will continue to show up in new and exciting ways - like industrial, manufacturing, and medical monitoring and control applications.

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Labels: wireless