Using a WLAN infrastructure as a wireless sensor network in a scalable architecture

In this paper we present a scalable architecture which involves different kind of 802.11 mobile devices in a manner which resembles to a wireless sensor network. Today, various wireless solutions exist for sensor networks applications. However there is no widely deployed standard to win over the market and the computational capabilities of such devices are still very limited. On the other hand the IEEE 802.11 standard is generally adopted in a large number of applications from the commercial to the public domain. This was possible because the standard fulfills all the requirements regarding cost, manageability and security. Even more, new designs allow 802.11 devices to be endowed with energy saving mechanisms that meet the requirements for a wireless sensor network. The final goal of this architecture is to offer context-awareness for mobile terminals which are operating in a domain covered by a 802.11 infrastructure.