Capturing Ambient

Intelligence for Mobile

Communications Through
Wireless Sensor Networks

The e-SENSE vision is a complete

system that combines enabling
technologies to provide seamless
and nomadic access to new classes
of applications by capturing an
unprecedented level of context
information through the use of body,
object and environment sensor
networks, integrated into Beyond
3G Systems and Platforms.

Project website :
www.ist-e-sense.org

e-SENSE is an Integrated Project (IP) supported by the European 6th Framework Programme, contract number: 027227
e-SENSE Scenario Portfolio
The e-SENSE assumptions and requirements are based on 26 diverse application scenarios (16
audio-visual show cases) that have been de-composed into context building blocks and their requirements
and subsequently exposed to acceptance studies, which provided feedback to the project.

An integrated user and scenario based design approach

The e-SENSE scenario portfolio presents 26 assorted context

aware application concepts that can provide benefits to the users
and business actors in three application spaces :

Personal application space

(Lifestyle assistant).

Community application space
(Wireless hospital).

Industrial application space

(Remote asset monitoring).
e-Skiing : a scenario in the
Personal application space
16 audiovisual showcases presenting selected scenarios from the
portfolio. The scenarios and audivisual showcases can be found
at the e-SENSE project website :www.ist-e-sense.org

A customised story telling technique with interactive interface in four languages presents future usa-
ges and Ambient Intelligence challenges such as mobility and sensing psycho-social situations.

Scenarios have been presented to the

public in three countries to study the
user and social acceptance. Limits and
opportunities for context aware mobile
applications have been characterised as
well as design recommendations.

Movie snap-shot of e-Skiing scenario

e-SENSE System Architecture
Based on the e-SENSE scenarios and analysis, an early reference model was developed that over the course
of the project has been transformed into an end-to-end e-SENSE system architecture, spanning from
the individual nodes to the service platform, specifying the e-STACK (protocol stack architecture), Gateway
extensions and WSN integration into IMS service platform, as a novel e-SENSE service enabler. The
scope of the e-SENSE system architecture goes well beyond the ZigBee standard as it :

Integrates advanced protocol concepts and new

Management Subsystem
communication paradigms, e.g. data centricity.
Service
Promoter Application Subsystem Supports complete configuration of the protocol
Service stack for various sensor applications.
SAP

Gateway Application Application Application Discovery

Manager 1 2 N

Node Offers enhanced support functionality for advan-

SAP Discovery
Middleware Middleware Subsystem
ced WSN applications, e.g. localisation and ran-
Subsystem
Location and ging support.
SAP

MW MW Data Positioning
MW Control
Interaction Transfer
Entities
Manager Entities
Time
Allows an efficient integration of cross-layer opti-
SAP Synchronisation mised protocols.
B3G Connectivity Subsystem
Security
Connectivity
Subsystem Manager Considers gateway extensions to allow easy inte-
SAP

CO Data
Transfer
CO Control gration of WSNs into B3G systems, e.g integra-
Entities
Entities Node
Manager
tion into IMS based service platforms.

PHY System Allows wireless sensor nodes and the network to

Entities Manager
dynamically adapt their behaviour according to
environmental conditions.
e-SENSE system architecture and gateway extension
Home
The e-STACK has four subsystems, connectivity (CO),
Diameter e-SENSE
Subscriber
Server
AS Interface between SE middleware (MI), management (MA) and application
application server
and e-SENSE SE (AP) subsystems realising all relevant service functions
Session
Initiation
of an e-SENSE system.
Application Plane Protocol In addition, the proposed system architecture allows
the efficient integration of e-SENSE systems into an IP
Diameter CSCF* SIP multimedia subsystem (IMS) service platform, by ad-
ding protocol functions to the e-STACK implemented
Control Plane SIP in the gateway and providing a novel e-SENSE ser-
Interface between SE
vice enabler (SE) in the IMS domain. The SE allows
e-SENSE and e-SENSE system standardised access to sensor-based context infor-
*CSCF = Call Session Control Function system
mation to applications in the IMS domain potentially
Integration into IMS service Platform - e-SENSE Service Enabler utilising many deployed e-SENSE systems.

Innovative Protocols and Mechanisms for the e-SENSE Subsystems

WSN communication mechanisms tailored to the application
scenarios proposed in e-SENSE in terms of Protocol Elements
for MAC, Networking, Transport and Management.
Energy Efficient Air-Interfaces for WSN achieving 20nJ/bit.
Cross-optimisation of Protocol Elements and design of several
WSN protocol stack instantiations.
Context-aware security, privacy and trust framework together
with protocols and mechanisms forming a complete toolbox
solution providing adaptability, flexibility and scalability to
support the customisation of e-SENSE architecture.
Distributed Services, addressing common services such as
localisation/positioning, timing and synchronisation and
service discovery.
Distributed Data Processing, addressing collaborative
processing and context awareness support.
Data Centric Resource Management, which aims to optimise
computing and communications resources in a data-centric
network.
An integrated WSN middleware solution (e-SENSE
distributed middleware), including service discovery, resource
management and semantic transport, based on publish/
subscribe.
e-SENSE Subsystem Components
The e-SENSE project results bring innovation in efficient ultra low power communications targeting 20nJ/bit,
networking and distributed middleware. The e-STACK is a prototype implementation with minimal functionality.
The developed protocols and mechanisms advanced the state of the art significantly and can be applied to a
host of problems in the WSN domain.

Ultra Low Power radios

The radio components are known to be the power consumption
bottleneck in Wireless Sensor Networks. Technology progress,
novel design methodologies and accurate specification and
modelling help to decrease power consumption.
A 20nJ/bit implementation of the IEEE 802.15.4 radio is
realised in e-SENSE, 3 to 10 times below the state-of-the-
art. e-SENSE results also include efficient UWB based PHY
and MAC components (IEEE 802.15.4a) for Body Sensor
Networks in Lifestyle Assistant scenarios.
LetiBee chip test board Deployement used in the validation
of a novel flooding protocol
Efficient Networking
On top of ULP PHYs, cross layer designed protocols are
necessary to achieve system level performance and power
consumption optimisation. e-SENSE proposed and evaluated
efficient MAC+NWK protocols optimally suited for Wire-
less Sensor Networks, in particular BSNs and ESNs. The
interest dissemination solutions from gateways to nodes and
converge casting solutions from nodes to gateways showed
improved performance with respect to state-of-the-art over
several metrics.
Accurate HW-dependant PHY layer power consumption
models were exploited. Robustness to localisation errors was
assessed for geographic based solutions. Experiments based Sensinode Nano used for e-STACK prototype
on COTS platform gave a useful and positive feedback for
further optimisations.

Service Management MI MA
The execution model of the e-SENSE system is based on
Service Discovery
SAP

the instantiation of services on participating sensor nodes. A Application 1

query for context information to the sensor network is transla-
Node Discovery
ted into the invocation of either a simple or complex service.
Service discovery, Service (de)composition, Resource mana- SAP SAP
gement, and publish/subscribe as enabling mechanisms are
required functions to support the query processing. AS
Forwarding SAP
Pub / Sub
Distributed Data and Context Processing Techniques
Exporting raw data out of the system for processing at the
SAP
edge of the network has inherent scalability limitation, both on
the communication bandwidth and the central storage and CO
processing power requirements. e-SENSE uses distributed CO Data CO Control
data and context processing schemes in order to pre-process Transfer Entities Entities
context data as it flows through the network.

e-SENSE WSN node (e-STACK)

Introduction to e-SENSE Test Beds
The e-SENSE project has generated several test beds and show-cases to demonstrate key innovations
from the project. These include Ultra Low Power (ULP) Transceiver Components (LetiBee), Body Sensor
Network, Ambient Smart Sign and Mood Detection. The Body Sensor Network and Smart Sign test
beds are illustrated below.

Body Sensor Network Test Bed and Prototype Applications

The test bed demonstrates an end-to-end implementation
of the e-SENSE System Architecture, consisting of body
sensor networks integrated via gateways and the e-SENSE
service enabler into an IP multimedia subsystem (IMS)
service platform. The system is able to capture activity,
physiological and emotional state of users, making it
available to IMS application servers (AS) in the service
platform to realise a variety of enhanced applications in the
areas of personal security, life-style management and enter-
tainment (e.g. e-Skiing).

Body Sensor Network Gateway B3G Service Platform

Audio facility SensiNode Service Enabler IMS CSCF* IMS

for mood induction Micro4 SensiNode
Application
Nano USB
ECG* Node 1 WLAN Server
Access point
Environmental Breathing Rate Node 4
Temperature
Node 2
Temperature
EDA*

Node 3

Accelerometer
Node 4 IMS* domain
Linux Server
SensiNode Smart phone
Nano

*EDA : Electro Dhermal Activity *CSCF : Call Session Control Function

*ECG : Electrocardiogram *IMS : IP Multimedia Subsystem

Ambient Smart Signs

The test bed demonstrates the realisation of an environ-
mental sensor network based on the e-SENSE system in
an office/enterprise environment. Features include, transfer
of dynamic context information (e.g. position) for multiple
users, large-scale deployment (entire building), 3D Locali-
sation, proximity detection mechanisms and in-field data
processing. The system is integrated with an ubiquitously
deployed signage infrastructure, able to realise persona-
lised and context-aware guidance in public spaces, intelli-
gent emergency evacuation, etc.
 e-SENSE Consortium

Project Coordinator: Universities:

Laurent Herault, CEA-LETI Delft University of Technology
laurent.herault@cea.fr (DUT) - Netherlands

Eidgenössische Technische
Hochschule
(ETHZ) - Switzerland
Technical Manager:
King’s College London
Derek Babb, UniS (KCL) - United Kingdom
d.babb@surrey.ac.uk University of Oulu
Mirko Presser (UO) - Finland
m.presser@surrey.ac.uk
University of Surrey
Administrative Manager: (UniS) - United Kingdom

University of the Aegean

Giuseppe Candela, ALMA CG (Aegean) - Great Britain
gcandela@almacg.com
University of Twente
(UT) - Netherlands

Universite Pierre Mendes

Companies: France
(UPMF) - France
ALMA Consulting Group
(ALMA CG) - France

EADS Defence and Research Institutes:

Security Systems SA
(EADS) - France Commissariat a L’Energie
Fujitsu Laboratories of Europe Atomique
(FLE) – United Kingdom (CEA) - France

IBM Research GmbH Centre Suisse d’Electronique

(IBM) - Switzerland et de Microtechnique SA
(CSEM) - Switzerland
Mitsubishi Electric ITCE
(ITE) - France Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
zur Förderung der
Nokia Siemens Networks, angewandten Forschung
S.p.A. (FOKUS) - Germany
(NSN) - Italia
Interuniversitair Micro-
Telefónica Investigación y Electronica Centrum
Desarrollo Sociedad Anónima (IMEC) - Belgium
Unipersonal
(TID) - Spain

Thales Research & Technology

(TRT) – United Kingdom SMEs:
Ambient Systems B.V.
(Ambient Systems) - Netherlands
Universities:
Création :: Comète :: www.comete.com

HFC Human-Factors-Consult
GmbH
Aalborg University (HFC) - Germany
(AAU) - Denmark

Consorzio Ferrara Ricerche

(CFR) - Italia

e-SENSE has 24 Partners in 11 EU Countries. The project kicked-off in January 2006 and ended in December 2007. The EC contribution towards the project
was 6.3 Meuro (approximately 10 MEuro Budget) which funded 950 person months over its 24 months duration.