Chapter 1
Distributed Sensors
Recent technological discoveries in distributed systems, new clustering and networking protocols in conjunction with progressing wireless, Internet and new smart sensors, have led us to move towards more intelligent sensor solutions for which we expect a growing global demand and new range of superior applications to promote our next stages of technology for a new social and economical development paradigm. In order to achieve this unique opportunity for a maximum global impact using minimum resources we need to harmonise our global, regional and local industrial and academic efforts at all levels under the common goals of sensor enabled smart media distributed systems.
1.1 Primary Objectives
Due to the service nature of sensor technology and its firm market relationships with other technologies in many aspects of our modern life in an ever-growing industrial world, one can visualise the sensitivity, if not dependability, of our social and economical developments to the sensors. Our understanding of this technology can be greatly influenced by the choice of one out of two extreme views of sensors.
First view: they are regarded as transducers, simple converters of a signal or data from one form into another, a more suitable format. The second view: they are regarded as intelligent proactive devices as part of a larger system where sensing plays an important role in bringing in a new layer of control and intelligence over our capabilities in managing ...
