A Versatile WSN Approach for Smart Environments in AAL Application

We propose the general architecture of a scaled physical world that is richly and invisibly interwoven with a variety of heterogeneous sensors, actuators, seamlessly embedded in everyday live objects, and connected through a unique IPv6 wireless network. The use of the Internet Protocol (IP) stack in Wireless Sensor Networks architecture is a key prerequisite for the Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. The ability to connect thousands of smart objects, scattered across physical environment, directly to the Internet opens exciting scenarios for a variety of application areas, such as e-health, smart metering, smart home, logistics, home automation, AAL, etc. Furthermore, it allows to achieve the desired interoperability requirement between the previous systems that to date make use of heterogeneous protocols and G2G communications. The strength of the developed system is its versatility and scalability relatively to the number and density of deployed nodes, network typology and types of actuators and sensing units that can be easily integrated in each node. The variety of measurements for the constant care and safety of person living in the environment monitored by the WSN can be easily extended by adding to the network new types of nodes. The paper describes the proposed system’s major building blocks, its functionalities, the implementation approach and the realized application for indoor localization.