08/08/2015
SENSORS Business Week heralded it as one of the 21 most important technologies for the 21st century. Cheap, smart devices with multiple onboard sensors, networked through wireless links and the Internet and deployed in large numbers, provide unprecedented opportunities for instrumenting and controlling homes, cities, industrial process and the environment. And for defense arena, generating new capabilities for reconnaissance and surveillance as well as other tactical applications Smart disposable microsensors can be deployed on the ground, in the air, under water, on bodies, in vehicles, and inside buildings. A system of networked sensors can detect and track threats (e.g., winged and wheeled vehicles, personnel, chemical and biological agents) and be used for weapon targeting and area denial. Each sensor node will have embedded processing capability, and will potentially have multiple onboard sensors, operating in the acoustic, seismic, infrared (IR), and magnetic modes, as well as imagers and microradars. Current and potential market opportunity of sensor networks in Nigeria and West Africa as a whole include: military sensing, physical security, air traffic control, traffic surveillance, video surveillance, industrial and manufacturing automation, distributed robotics, environment monitoring, and building and structures monitoring. The sensors in these applications may be small or large, and the networks may be wired or wireless. However, ubiquitous wireless networks of micro sensors probably offer the most potential in changing the world of sensing The development of sensor networks requires technologies from three different research areas: sensing, communication((high-level protocols that link processes working on a common application in a resource-sharing network), and computing (including hardware, software, and including self-location algorithms)
