Relaying as a Service for Distributed Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) were initially envisioned as large-scale deployments of diminutive, low-cost, and long-life sensors. However, realizing this vision has been hindered by significant challenges, particularly in efficiently transmitting sensing data to data centers. This talk introduces a novel framework, called relaying-as-a-service (RaaS), that utilizes public user equipments (UEs) as opportunistic relays for sensor data delivery. By offloading communication tasks to these more capable UEs, and leveraging existing fifth generation (5G) and emerging sixth generation (6G) network infrastructures, RaaS significantly reduces the size, cost, and complexity of sensor nodes while eliminating the need for dedicated networking infrastructure. This paradigm shift streamlines the deployment of WSNs and Internet of Things (IoTs) applications and enables large-scale frequency reuse to alleviate spectrum congestion. Inspired by commercial crowd-assisted tracking technologies such as Apple AirTag and Samsung SmartTag, RaaS generalizes this concept to support large-scale, decentralized sensing via public relays, enabling cost-effective and scalable data collection for future smart environments.