Sense, decide, act, communicate (SDAC): next generation of smart sensor systems

Abstract

The recent war on terrorism and increased urban warfare has been a major catalysis for increased interest in the development of disposable unattended wireless ground sensors. While the application of these sensors to hostile domains has been generally governed by specific tasks, this research explores a unique paradigm capitalizing on the fundamental functionality related to sensor systems. This functionality includes a sensors ability to Sense -multi-modal sensing of environmental events, Decide -smart analysis of sensor data, Act -response to environmental events, and Communication -internal to system and external to humans (SDAC). The main concept behind SDAC sensor systems is to integrate the hardware, software, and networking to generate 'knowledge and not just data'. This research explores the usage of wireless SDAC units to collectively make up a sensor system capable of persistent, adaptive, and autonomous behavior. These systems are base on the evaluation of scenarios and existing systems covering various domains. This paper presents a promising view of sensor network characteristics, which will eventually yield smart (intelligent collectives) network arrays of SDAC sensing units generally applicable to multiple related domains. This paper will also discuss and evaluate the demonstration system developed to test the concepts related to SDAC systems.

Guest Editorial Special Section on Intelligent Sensing Fundamentals and Applications

“…Another related aspect is that of multisensor fusion, where different sensors are combined to achieve better measurement accuracy and reliability by exploiting diversity and eliminating, again model-based, negative effects of environmental influences [12]. In the end, intelligent sensing systems can reach some degree of autonomy, like in the SDAC model discussed in [13], where sensor functionalities are defined as multimodal: Sensing of environmental events, Deciding based on smart analysis of sensor data, Acting to environmental events, and Communicating both internally within the system and externally to humans. Such sensor systems are proposed to integrate hardware, software, and networking facilities to generate data-supported knowledge.…”