What is Embedded Networked Sensing (ENS)?

ENS requires robust distributed systems of thousands of physically-embedded, unattended and often untethered devices.

CENS technology research draws on a diverse set of researchers within engineering, from distributed system design, to distributed robotics, to wireless communications, to signal processing and low-power multi-modal sensor-technology design. The physically-embedded nature of this technology calls for significant experimentation and exploration in the context of targeted application domains in order to identify the true challenges and opportunities.

• Embedded Network Sensing (ENS) systems are massively distributed collections of smart sensors and actuators embedded in the physical world.
• ENS enables spatially and temporally dense environmental monitoring to look at phenomena "up close".
• ENS will reveal previously unobservable phenomena, leading to better understanding and management of our complex physical environment.
• ENS requires long-lived systems that can be both untethered (wireless) and unattended. Consequently, these systems must exploit computation near the data sources (sensors) to filter out uninteresting data and reduce energy-consuming communications.
• ENS requires self-configuring systems that adapt to unpredictable environments where pre-configuration and manual intervention are precluded.
• ENS requires data and collaborative signal processing inside the network to achieve desired global behavior with localized algorithms (distributed control).

CENTER FOR EMBEDDED NETWORKED SENSING

EMBEDDED

Embed numerous distributed devices to monitor and interact with physical world.

Control system with small form factor untethered nodes.

NETWORKED

network devices to
coordinate and perform higher-level tasks.

Exploit collaborative sensing, action.

SENSING

Tightly coupled to physical world.

Exploit spatially and temporally
dense, in situ, sensing and actuation.