The Development of a Robust, Autonomous Sensor Network Platform for Environmental Monitoring

This paper describes an approach to the approaches being explored for a Sensor Network platform being developed for the DTI/NextWave technologies programme. The approach being adopted is to develop the system as a community of devices which use self-organising techniques to provide key functions. The devices are, largely, based on commodity technologies, thus providing a low cost basis. We give an outline of th eapproach and project and illustrate the techniques being developed with specific functions for: control, management, data retrieval and data quality control. The target application is off shore sea shelf monitoring; but the techniques being developed may be applied to a range of problems.