Monitoring the environment utilizes a large variety of new research techniques and technologies announced CINTRA Director Prof Baillargeat Dominique during his opening remarks on the 19th of March 2013 at the 1st Next generation of self-power smart sensors for environmental monitoring Workshop, sponsored by NTU/CoE and NTU/SEEE IoT Seed Grant.
The combination of new sensors, communication systems and massive information processing is enabling a new generation of research that can sense and monitor different environments and analyze change.
The global environmental sensor and monitoring market was valued at $11.3 billion in 2011, and is expected to reach $15.3 billion in 2016. In this context of rapid growth, the next generation of sensors has to be self-powered, smart, high integrated, with communication capabilities and in many applications, based on nanomaterials for better sensitivity and to achieve multi-functionalities. It has been demonstrated that the potential of the use of nanomaterial based sensors is significant in many areas. During the workshop, we aimed at focusing on environmental sensors.
According to current studies in the word, development of micro-chip smart sensors with high sensitivities as well as high selectivities still remains a big challenge. This later was considered during the workshop.
Communication technologies were also‚ considered in sensor surrounding for the sensors to talk to each other and to the base station, and software to manage and analyze all the data that are collected. In this context internet and/or machine to machine (M2M) approaches will contribute to the development of system network with efficiency.
In addition to the scientific goals described above, this workshop aimed at sharing experience and knowledge of academic and industrial contributors from Asia, Europe and America.
In light to the increasing demand and associated challenges in this space, Ren Arbefeuille, CMO at MY Evolution highlighted the solutions for managing M2M networks, from provisioning and connecting devices to the network, to managing and maintaining them over their lifetime. In his talk, Arbefeuille introduced the necessary tools and services that are determinant to enable implementation of smart M2M solutions.
A full presentation abstract can be found here