Application of Wireless Sensor Network for the Monitoring Systems of Vessels

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained worldwide attention in recent years, particularly with the proliferation of Micro‐Electro‐Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology which has facilitated the development of smart sensors. Smart sensors are small devices composed of one or more sensors, a memory, a processor, a power supply and a radio unit. They can sense the environment, measure and send data wirelessly to control unit for further processing and decisions. WSNs have great potential for many applications such as habitat monitoring (Polastre et al., 2004), intrusion detection and target tracking and surveillance (Arora et al., 2004), oceanography (Tateson et al., 2005), environmental monitoring (Barrenetxea et al., 2008a, 2008b; Padhy et al., 2005; Selavo et al., 2007), structural health monitoring (Paek et al., 2005), infrastructure monitoring (Stoianov et al., 2007), precision agriculture (Langendoen et al., 2006), biomedical health monitoring (Gao et al., 2005), and hazardous environment exploration and seismic sensing (Werner‐Allen et al., 2006).