On the convergence between Wireless Sensor Network and RFID: Industrial environment

The convergence between Wireless Sensor Network and RFID technology enables the development of flexible and integrated architectures that could currently represent a competitive solution for several application scenarios. This paper proposes an advanced heterogeneous wireless network designed for industrial environments: typical sensor applications (personal and environmental parameters monitoring), RFID based services (e.g. objects identification) and convergent applications (localization and tracking) are merged. Several research topics are addressed (resource optimization, low power communication within hostile environments, etc). Proposed model would be a generalized solution that assures high performance in terms of reliability, robustness, and flexibility: main architecture component, Multi-Modal Wireless Sensor Node (MM-WSNode), is provided with multiple sensing, communication and data process resource that allows several working modes in function of environmental conditions detected.