Visualizations of Wireless Sensor Network Data

Wireless sensor networks can provide large amounts of data that, when combined with pre-processing and data analysis processes, can generate large amounts of data that may be difficult to present in visual forms. Often, understanding of the data and how it spatially and temporally changes as well as the patterns suggested by the data are of interest to human viewers. This chapter considers the issues involved in the visual presentations of such data and includes an analysis of data set sizes generated by wireless sensor networks and a survey of existing wireless sensor network visualization systems. A novel model is presented that can include not only the raw data but also derived data indicating certain patterns that the raw data may indicate. The model is informally presented and a simulation-based example illustrates its use and potential.