Chapter 8
Geographical Applications
There are a vast number of applications of distributed sensing platforms in scenarios located outside of buildings in which there is not any prebuilt networking infrastructure at all. This chapter covers many of these applications and scenarios. Firstly, the application of distributed sensing platforms into the farming industry is described covering scenarios such as vineyards, sugar farms and orchard monitoring and management. After that, the special requirements and designs of sensing platforms in order to work correctly in holistic scenarios such as the coal mining industry are also presented. Transportation is another direct application scenario covered in this chapter in which different applications such as maintenance of cold chain and vehicular health monitoring are exposed. The application in earth resource monitoring is also addressed, covering scenarios like volcano monitoring or dynamic spatial fields. Finally, the usage of distributed sensing platforms for underwater applications and its challenges associated directly to the transmission of signal in this medium is also described.
8.1 Farming Industry
The importance of using sensors in agriculture was well understood a long time ago. Even the application of primitive humidity sensors could have been facilitating the work of a farmer by directing his efforts to particular areas of the plantation that are in need of water. More sophisticated sensor devices with today's capabilities ...
