Wireless Sensor Systems for Space and Extreme Environments: A Review

Using wireless sensor network (WSN) for building new sensing and actuating applications in space and extreme environments (SEEs) can fuel a new application paradigm if it can be adopted into a new strategy. This complementary contribution from the Guest Editors carries an important message of breaking away from conventional WSN research and developments and adopting a heterogeneous agile unconventional wireless sensing (UWS) approach deployment. For this, we urge the use of lightweight WSN known as wireless sensor systems (WSS) to develop optimized solutions for SEE. This paper also discusses some critical technologies of WSS-SEE and includes three key aspects of a new approach to examine: 1) the characterizes of SEE; 2) potential applications of UWS; and 3) heterogeneously nature of the applications. A further clarification for deployment of UWS is demonstrated using a table with six groups of typical application areas from the recent publications media.