An Environmentally Aware Scheme of Wireless Sensor Networks for Forest Fire Monitoring and Detection

Yi-Han Xu,Qiu-Ya Sun,Yu-Tong Xiao

doi:10.3390/fi10100102

Abstract

Forest fires are a fatal threat to environmental degradation. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are regarded as a promising candidate for forest fire monitoring and detection since they enable real-time monitoring and early detection of fire threats in an efficient way. However, compared to conventional surveillance systems, WSNs operate under a set of unique resource constraints, including limitations with respect to transmission range, energy supply and computational capability. Considering that long transmission distance is inevitable in harsh geographical features such as woodland and shrubland, energy-efficient designs of WSNs are crucial for effective forest fire monitoring and detection systems. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that harnesses the benefits of WSNs for forest fire monitoring and detection. The framework employs random deployment, clustered hierarchy network architecture and environmentally aware protocols. The goal is to accurately detect a fire threat as early as possible while maintaining a reasonable energy consumption level. ns-2-based simulation validates that the proposed framework outperforms the conventional schemes in terms of detection delay and energy consumption.

Highlights

Forest fires are one of the main disasters that have multi-dimensional negative effects in ecological, economic, and social areas throughout the world
A simulation of a wireless sensor network for forest fire monitoring and detection was carried out using modified ns-2
There are two main modifications that have been made in ns-2.31: fire-sim-lib and ctrl-center are added to ns-2.31

Summary

Introduction

Forest fires are one of the main disasters that have multi-dimensional negative effects in ecological, economic, and social areas throughout the world. Due to the spread features of forest fires (forest fires move at speeds of up to 23 km per hour), the firefighter should be aware of this threat within 6 min once the fire starts. To ensure firefighters are aware of the forest fires as early as possible, some important technologies have been developed to monitor and detect forest fires. There are charge-coupled device (CCD) cameras [2] and infrared (IR) detectors [3], satellite systems and images [4], wireless sensor networks (WSNs) [5] and UAV-based forest fire detection and tracking technology [6]. WSNs are the networks characterized by being self-organizing and infrastructure-less, and consisting of several small, energy-limited, and low-cost sensor nodes. Energy consumption of power-limited WSNs becomes a major concern when targeting a long-term continuous surveillance of the entire forest area

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Results

Conclusion