Browsing the Sensor Web : Pervasive Access for Wide-area Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are almost exclusively regarded as data gathering entities. Various sensed data elements are captured and routed back to a central server for processing, visualization and interpretation. However, it can be realistically conjectured that scenarios will increasingly emerge that demand a facility for ad-hoc interaction with individual sensor nodes. Moreover, such interaction will occur in the physical environment in close proximity to where the sensor node is physically located. In this paper, the need for in-situ ad-hoc interaction is motivated. A methodology for facilitating such interaction is presented, and the implementation of a sensor browser is described.