This project, developing a publicly available environmental monitoring computer research infrastructure, incorporates open sensor network platforms and tools with intertwined wired and wireless sensors and actuators to support computing research and education.
Through the one-stop web interface, users will be able to perform over-the-air programming on the wireless sensor networks and collect, model, and visualize real-time environmental data about water, land, and air from thousands of miles away. A channel measurement toolbox will be developed to capture propagation characteristics for the field of wireless sensor networks. Extensive data, including RF signal strength and throughput, will be collected for different scenaris.
The work contributes to develop the Texas Environmental Observatory (TEO) that builds upon and goes beyond the ECOPLEX (Environmental Conditions Online of DFW MetroPLEX). TEO provides a real life testbed for projects that would be impossible without the deployment of large-scale environmental monitoring sensor networks and the fine-grained spatio-temporal sensor data.
The infrastructure enables immediate interdisciplinary research and education projects that include energy efficient map interpolation, robust localization models, code designs for cooperative communication in wireless sensor networks, high resolution near real time environmental monitoring and modeling, and modeling for K-12 teachers/students.