User's Manual

User Manual
3000 SERIES 3
rd
GENERATION ACTIVE RFID
11 Appendices
11.1 Appendix A: WSN Basics
Ambient Systems wireless products are based on industry standards to provide easy-to-use and
compatible Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) within your home, business, warehouse, transport
vehicles and so forth. Strictly adhering to the IEEE 802.15.4 standard, the Ambient Systems wireless
family of products will allow you to securely access the data you want, when and where you want it.
You will be able to enjoy the freedom that Wireless Sensor Networking delivers.
11.1.1 What is Wireless?
Wireless technology is a means of communication without using wires. WSNs use a certain radio
frequency to connect wirelessly, so you have the freedom to connect WSN nodes anywhere in your
warehouse, transport unit, office, and so forth.
11.1.2 What is a Wireless Sensor Network?
A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a wireless network consisting of spatially distributed
autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions,
such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants, at different locations. The
development of WSNs was originally motivated by military applications such as battlefield
surveillance. However, WSNs are now used in many civilian application areas, including
environment and habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home automation, traffic control, in-
transport monitoring, cold chain, and so forth.
In addition to one or more sensors, each node in a WSN is typically equipped with a radio
transceiver or other wireless communications device, a small micro controller, and an energy source,
usually a battery. The envisaged size of a single sensor node can vary from shoebox-sized nodes
down to devices the size of grain of dust, although functioning 'nodes' of genuine microscopic
dimensions have yet to be created. The cost of sensor nodes is similarly variable, ranging from
hundreds of dollars to a few cents, depending on the size of the WSN and the complexity required
within individual sensor nodes. Size and cost constraints on sensor nodes result in corresponding
constraints on resources such as energy, memory, computational speed and bandwidth.
A WSN normally constitutes a wireless ad-hoc network, meaning that each sensor supports a multi-
hop routing algorithm, in other words: several nodes may forward data packets to the base station or
gateway.
In computer science and telecommunications, WSNs are an active research area with numerous
workshops and conferences arranged each year. Since the start of the millennium, WSN technology
has also found its way to commercial markets, clearly indicating that it has matured to a level in
which the technology is deemed fit for real-world applications.
11.1.3 Why Ambient Systems?
Ambient Systems is one of the worlds first 3
rd
Generation Active RFID providers that utilize this
WSN technology. It provides new possibilities that were previously hard to combine in a single
network; identification, monitoring, location determination, logging. And all this in a secure way.
Ambient Systems has developed its own network stack on top of IEEE 802.15.4. The stack has been
developed over the last years, originally as a deliverable of one of Europe's biggest research projects
into WSN (the EYES project, see www.eyes.eu.org). Ambient Systems modified the stack in such a
63/73 Ambient Systems B.V.