It wasn’t that long ago when 3G network was touted to give mobile users broadband experience on the move. Till today, even though I have 3G capabled mobile phone, I still am not experiencing the “web surfing” experience I enjoy 7-8 years ago using my desktop machine. Whereas the speed of fixed line broadband has increased considerably over these years, the bandwidth you get from 3G connection has not really managed to catch up. It is a wonder if 3G can ever live up to the expectation they once jazzed up years ago.
Then there is the multi-hop ad hoc networks which threatened to compete with network operators’ infrastructure, extending the coverage of the last mile access and potentially squeezing the core networks. Thankfully after the telecom bubble, the hype surrounding this was much less than the 3G circus, but it is a networking concept that has captured many’s imagination initially. To be honest, it is still a very unique networking concept, and has shown to work, but just has not been good enough, yet again. It is more realistic at the moment to use it in a more static environment than trying to get it to work satisfactorily in an environment where every nodes can potentially move around.
So is the wireless sensor network. It seems to also come to a stage where the hype is slowly fading away and people are getting back to basic. Rather than trying to capture investors’ attention by telling them that, “hey, these little motes can be thrown out of the aeroplane and they can ’self-configure’ to form a network and propagate monitoring information back to the base station”, people are more prudent and use it in a more sensible way in the form of Zigbee network with a star topology for example. Multi-hop, long lifespan wireless sensor network is still some way from being ready for deployment.
Anyway the point is new technologies will keep emerging all the time. It’s good to feel excited about new technologies. But unless you are in the position to do something about the technologies, there’s no need to get overly distracted by the hype surrounding it, created by marketing people who don’t know that much about the technologies, yet somehow manage to leave a bad taste in many people’s mouth.
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Well, perhaps not, €627 is still a lot of money. Just shows that wireless sensor motes are still very much in the prototype stage.
