Towards a general wireless sensor network platform for outdoor environment monitoring

As wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have developed over the last decade, environmental scientists have widely adapted this new technology to monitor various phenomena in the natural environment, for example, debris flows, pollution, volcanoes, and so on. However, significant efforts are still needed to customize WSN design for certain special requirements. To remedy the redundancy of efforts to customize similar applications, we explore the possibility of designing a general WSN platform that can be used for various monitoring applications in an outdoor environment. We survey the existing WSN applications, summarize their common requirements, and conclude with the specification of a general WSN platform for these applications.