Five years of designing wireless sensor networks in the Doñana Biological Reserve (Spain): an applications approach

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2013-09, Vol.13 (9), p.12044-12069
• Main Authors: Larios, Diego F, Barbancho, Julio, Sevillano, José L, Rodríguez, Gustavo, Molina, Francisco J, Gasull, Virginia G, Mora-Merchan, Javier M, León, Carlos
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: computational intelligence; Ecosystem; Environmental Monitoring - instrumentation; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; habitat monitoring; neural networks; Spain; Transducers; wireless sensor network; Wireless Technology - instrumentation
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s130912044

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are a technology that is becoming very popular for many applications, and environmental monitoring is one of its most important application areas. This technology solves the lack of flexibility of wired sensor installations and, at the same time, reduces the deployment costs. To demonstrate the advantages of WSN technology, for the last five years we have been deploying some prototypes in the Doñana Biological Reserve, which is an important protected area in Southern Spain. These prototypes not only evaluate the technology, but also solve some of the monitoring problems that have been raised by biologists working in Doñana. This paper presents a review of the work that has been developed during these five years. Here, we demonstrate the enormous potential of using machine learning in wireless sensor networks for environmental and animal monitoring because this approach increases the amount of useful information and reduces the effort that is required by biologists in an environmental monitoring task.