Wireless Sensor Networks : Technology, Protocols, and Applications

EXAMPLES OF CATEGORY 2 WSN APPLICATIONS 57
Smoke, CO, and H 2 O detectors
Refrigeration cage or appliance
Equipment management services and preventive maintenance
Security services (including peel-n’-stick security sensors)
Lighting control
Assembly line and workflow and inventory
Materials processing systems (heat, gas flow, cooling, chemical)
Gateway or field service links to sensors and equipment (monitored to support
preventive maintenance, status changes, diagnostics, energy use, etc.)
Remote monitoring from corporate headquarters of assets, billing, and energy
management
According to some observers, RFID tags are poised to become the most farreaching
wireless technology since the cell phone [2.33]. Worldwide revenues
from RFID tags was expected to jump to $2.8 billion in 2009. During this period,
the technology will appear in many industries, with a significant impact on the efficiency
of business processes. In the near term, the largest RFID segment is cartons
and supply chains; the second-largest market for RFIDs is consumer products,
although this market is sensitive to privacy concerns. Some C2WSNs (e.g., supported
with RFID technology) has applications for livestock and domestic pets;
humans; carton and supply chain uses; pharmaceuticals; large freight containers;
package tracking; consumer products; security, banking, purchasing and access
control; and others [2.34]. For example, Airbus’s A380 airplane is equipped with
about 10,000 RFID chips; the plane has passive RFID chips on removable parts
such as passenger seats and plane components. The benefits of RFID tagging of airplane
parts include reducing the time it takes to generate aircraft-inspection reports
and optimizing maintenance operations.
2.4.4 Medical Applications
A number of hospitals and medical centers are exploring applications of
WSN technology to a range of medical applications, including pre-hospital and
in-hospital emergency care, disaster response, and stroke patient rehabilitation.
WSNs have the potential to affect the delivery and study of resuscitative care
by allowing vital signs to be collected and integrated automatically into the
patient care record and used for real-time triage, correlation with hospital records,
and long-term observation [2.35,2.53]. WSNs permit home monitoring for
chronic and elderly patients, facilitating long-term care and trend analysis; this
in turn can sometimes reduce the length of hospital stays. WSNs also permit
collection of long-term medical information that populates databases of clinical
data; this enables longitudinal studies across populations and allows physicians
to study the effects of medical intervention programs [2.40]. These WSNs tend
to be of the C2WSN category.