(New Question) Motivation
A ubiquitous sensor network (USN) is identified as an intelligent information
service infrastructure which enables an advanced e-life society. USN provides
context-aware information and knowledge services which are developed by using
context awareness with sensing, storing, processing and integrating situational
and environmental information gathered from sensor tags and/or sensor nodes
affixed to anything, even the human body. It can deliver such information and
knowledge services to anyone at anywhere and anytime. The intelligent
information and knowledge services provided by USN can be presented in many
media types such as text, image, animated image, voice, music, and video.
USN applications and services are emerging at the moment. Situational and
context-aware information and knowledge produced by USN will add more values and
can provide more business opportunities to sensor-integrated applications and
services such as manufacturing and industrial fields; military, health care,
environmental control and utility use management, civil engineering, precision
agriculture, transportation, and so on.
In addition, the climate change is becoming a global agenda in the world and
ITU is taking this challenge as a global standards organization. SG 16 as a
technical Study Group in ITU-T should reply on this important subject and
develop standards on ICTs and climate change to better understand how ICTs can
help mitigate climate change in terms of multimedia systems and services. USN is
one of promising ICT solutions to mitigate climate change problems (e.g.
power/energy savings, greenhouse gas emission, natural environment pollution,
etc.). Sensor nodes and resulting sensor networks have to be installed at proper
measurement points to sense, collect and transmit climate status. USN supports
context-aware information services through processing collected climate
information.
A set of technology domains could be involved to realize various USN
services. For example, physical sensor networks have to be established by
wireless or wire-line, a sensor network has to be connected via various access
network technologies to a global network like NGN, Internet, and mobile cell
phone network. Middleware systems can be incorporated to perform intelligent and
context awareness processing. Finally, various USN applications and services
will require application layer technologies such as integrated services, sensor
information description and presentation, service discovery, etc.
As described below, there are several work items to support USN applications and
services. Hence, this Question should cover all the work items in a harmonized
way.
Study items
Generally USN has two study issues: how to transmit sensor data and how to
process sensor data. USN middleware and application layer technologies
correspond to how to process sensor data with taking consideration of services
provisioning to end-users.
Study items to be considered include, but are not limited to:
- Analysis of service and functional requirements: requirements analysis is a
starting point to extract service features, required functions, relevant
attributes and attribute values from various USN applications and services
- Architectural service framework: a reference framework is required to see
overall architecture consisting of system and network configurations, data
processing functionalities, and interface relationships due to heterogeneous
application components.
- Application profiling specifications: USN applications and services have
vertical characteristics and each one may have unique requirements. Each type of
USN application and service needs an application profile to define service
features, processing functions, operation attributes, attribute values, etc
- Sensor information description language: a variety of sensor information data
needs to be described in a standardized way and machine-readable form
- Middleware-relevant standards: a set of relevant standards need to be
developed for such middleware functions, such as sensor information gathering,
filtering by various policies and rules, data comparison and analysis, data
mining, context modelling language, context-awareness processing, context-aware
decision and estimation, integrated management of sensor information, service
integration, audio and video data transmission, and reference middleware
framework
- Directory service standards: a set of relevant standards need to be developed
to define a data structure for directory services, register and discovery USN
services, etc
- Sensor node identification scheme: a unique identifier needs to be assigned to
each sensor node for management purposes
- Considerations on how to help measure and mitigate climate change
Tasks
Tasks include, but are not limited to:
- Roadmap for relevant standards with compiling and analyzing standardization
requirements and work items
- Amendment with new features for existing Recommendations with regard to some
of the above study items such as directory services
- Studies on service description and requirements for USN middleware
- Studies on an architectural framework for USN middleware services
- Studies on functionality profiles of USN applications and services
- Studies on a sensor information description language
- Studies on a context modelling language for context awareness of USN
middleware
- Studies on audio and video data transmission protocols over low-power wireless
sensor networks
- Studies on application interfaces among USN middleware entities
- Studies on an identification scheme of USN elements including sensor nodes
Key work items need to be completed until 2010 to meet the time-to-market for
those emerging USN applications and services. An up-to-date status of work under
this Question is found in the SG 16 work programme (http://itu.int/ITU-T/workprog/wp_search.aspx?isn_sg=554).
Relationships
Recommendations:
- • F and H series Recommendations under the responsibility of SG 16
Questions:
Study Groups:
- ITU-T SG 13 on NGN-perspective USN issues (including USN middleware from
NGN point of view)
- ITU-T SG 17 on USN security and directory service issues
- ITU-R SG 1 on spectrum management
- ITU-R SG 3 on radio propagation
Other Bodies:
- IEEE 1451 on sensor and sensor node interface standards
- IEEE 802.15 on low-power wireless networking standards
- IETF 6LoWPAN on IPv6-based low-power networking over IEEE 802.15.4
- ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 6 on USN matters from lower to higher layers
- ZigBee Alliance on low-power sensor networking and application issues over
IEEE 802.15.4
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