In Situ Calibration Algorithms for Environmental Sensor Networks: A Review

The recent developments in both nanotechnologies and wireless technologies have enabled the rise of small, low-cost and energy-efficient environmental sensing devices. Many projects involving dense sensor networks deployments have followed, in particular, within the Smart City trend. If such deployments are now within economical and technical reach, their maintenance and reliability remain, however, a challenge. In particular, reaching, then maintaining, the targeted quality of measurement throughout deployment duration is an important issue. Indeed, factory calibration is too expensive for systematic application to low-cost sensors, as these sensors are usually prone to drifting because of premature aging. In addition, there are concerns about the applicability of factory calibration to field conditions. These challenges have fostered many researches on in situ calibration. In situ means that the sensors are calibrated without removing them from their deployment location, preferably without physical intervention, often leveraging their communication capabilities. It is a critical challenge for the economical sustainability of networks with large-scale deployments. In this paper, we focus on in situ calibration methods for environmental sensor networks. We propose a taxonomy of the methodologies in the literature. Our classification relies on both the architecture of the network of sensors and the algorithmic principles of the calibration methods. This review allows us to identify and discuss two main challenges: how to improve the performance evaluation of such methods and how to enable a quantified comparison of these strategies?