Fog supported wireless sensor networks for forest fire detection

Abstract

Fog computing is a new paradigm that aims to extend the concept of cloud computing to the edge of the network, providing the end users network with extra storage and processing power. One big contribution of Fog computing is in the context of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). WSNs consist of cheap, battery powered and simple processing devices that make it fall short in handling relatively complex processes.Therefore, applying fog computing to WSNs will fill the gap between the cloud and the network and by that, it will enable computationally extensive operations which were earlier possible only at the cloud side. In our work, we exploit the processing power provided by the Fog to minimize the power consumption of WSNs for forest fire detection through the use of data mining techniques. The Fog layer uses the data generated by the network such as temperature, humidity, rain, etc., to train a model that predicts the probability of forest fires. Next, the Fog layer uses this model to predict the mode of operation of the network based on the current condition of the environment. While a high predicted probability of forest fire results in an increased activity of the WSN, a low fire probability results in a reduced network activity. As a result, our proposed model optimizes the energy consumption within the WSN and improves the detection time of forest fires.