A system for monitoring marine environments based on Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for monitoring a coastal shallow water marine environment is presented. The study area is located in the Mar Menor coastal lagoon, situated in the Southeast of Spain, separated of the Mediterranean Sea by La Manga, a narrow piece of land of 22 km long and crossed by three channels that regulate the water circulation between the lagoon and the Mediterranean Sea. In order to know hydrodynamic performances of the lagoon and other oceanographic parameters a WSN has been developed. It is composed of several sensor nodes or buoys. These sensor nodes take oceanographic data and send them to the sink node using wireless communication. The description of this system, the buoy prototype and the user application are presented in this paper.