Advanced Research Programs (ARP) has funded a team of UHCL researchers to develop a WSN experiments
over a period of 2007-2009. As the head of the project, Dr. Yang has led the team in developing labs for supporting research
and teaching of network security, including wireless networks. The work proposed in this proposal is focusing on
developing secure and effective algorithms for WSN for Human Detection and tracking, and integrating a WSN Test Bed
into the existing computer security labs. The DCSL, currently providing ample space to host the network devices and
security appliances of the DCSL network, will be used to host the WSN Test Bed. Secure and Optimized Communication &
Organization for Target Tracking
in Wireless Sensor Networks (SOHO) proposal was submitted to the Texas Higher Education Coordination Board (THECB)
in April 2006 for the Advanced Research Programs grant. The proposal was accepted and completed by 2008.
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) represent a new technology that could be adopted to achieve ubiquitous computing and embedded Internet.
Surveillance and monitoring are one of the application of a deployment area. The aim of the project is to develop WSN and to detect and track the human/vehicle presence.
As an example, a large quantity of sensor nodes could be deployed over a battlefield to detect enemy intrusion instead of using landmines. Thus it can save lives of civilians from being lost due to disasters caused by landmines.
The challenging task of the project is to design an object tracking sensor network using the emulation approach (in contrast to the simulation approach).
The second challenge is the design a sample wireless sensor network application capable of detecting human presence. The motes and sensor nodes capture data from
the surrounding environment and send the data to the base station. A Java application running at the base station analyzes the data to determine whether a human is present.
This project is to demonstrate how a wireless sensor network may be employed to detect and track objects
EMULATION OVER SIMULATION
Wireless sensor networks represent a relatively new research field with many on going projects.
Majority of WSN projects are implemented using simulation, rather than emulation. Simulation is widely used as, the researcher is required to
acquire and use the simulation software. Emulation becomes even more complicated when the deployed WSN consists of a large number of sensor nodes.
Another limitation of the emulation approach is the constraint of limited battery power; exhausted batteries of sensor nodes must be replaced and,
to ensure accurate sensor readings, proper level of power must be maintained throughout the running of a WSN project
DESCRIPTION AND DESIGN OF WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK FOR OBJECT TRACKING
This project is built to detect the presence of a human when he/she comes in the vicinity of the sensors used in the system.
To recognize a human, we had developed a Java application, which runs on the basestation. The application collects data from the network and analyzes the collected data to detect the presence of human.
PIR (Passive InfraRed) sensors are used to collect data. Initial data is collected from the environment when no human is present, and a threshold value is set. Later when a human comes into the vicinity of the sensor,
it compares the current collected value with the threshold value and makes decision of human presence. The rest of this section describes the design of the project, and the hardware and software used.
Evaluation of the project is briefly described
Figure 1 depicts the design of our system. A sensor node is comprised of a battery-powered mote and a sensor board,
which is mounted on top of the mote. A gateway connected to the base station is in charge of passing the collected data from the network
to the base station. The Java application running on the base station analyzes the data collected from the network to detect the presence
of a human.
The specific hardware and software components employed in the system are summarized as follows:
Mote
The mote used is the TelosB mote (TPR2400 [7]) manufactured by the Crossbow, Inc.
Sensor
The sensor board is the WiEye sensor board manufactured by the EasySen, Inc. It has long-range
passive infrared (PIR) sensor with 90-100° wide detection cone, 20-30 feet detection range for human presence
Base Station
The base station is a desktop computer, on which Cygwin and Java virtual machine are installed
Cygwin
Cygwin is used to configure the WSN. Applications in motes are installed through its command based interface.
The base station application is also invoked from this software
Programmer's Notepad
Programmers Notepad is used to write, compile and debug the NesC program, which is installed in the motes to collect data from the environment.
Java
Java SDK 1.6.0 is used to develop the Java application, which processes data collected from the network and outputs the results to the screen of the base station.
EXPERIMENT CONDUCTED
Several experiments were conducted in the lab to test the working of the application.
Currently the project is tested with a single node. The application is able to detect the presence of a human in front of a node.
The application is also able to detect the presence of a human in both lighted and dark environments. It is independent of the level of light present in the environment.
Anticipated evaluation results: If a human is not present in the vicinity of the sensor, a message No object detected is shown on the screen.
On the other hand, if an object is detected, a message Object detected: I know you are there!.
The application demonstrates how various hardware and software components are
integrated to build a WSN application capable of detecting human presence. As exhibited by the experiments, the application is capable
of accurately fulfilling its mission, indicating that the passive infrared sensor employed in the application is sufficient for the detection of human presence
ARP has funded a team of UHCL researchers to develop a WSN experiments over a period of 2007-2009.
As the head of the project, Yang has led the team in developing labs for supporting research and teaching of network security,
including wireless networks. The work proposed in this proposal is focusing on developing secure
and effective algorithms for WSN for Human Detection and tracking, and integrating a WSN Test Bed into the existing computer security labs. The DCSL, currently
providing ample space to host the network devices and security appliances of the DCSL network, will be used to host the WSN Test Bed.
