Motes in water!

Only in Boston, where the most resilient survive - whether they are running marathons in dangerous weather or having a tea party at sea, the city of Boston has inspired many. At University of Massachusetts, Boston a center has been established to bring together university researchers, business and industry leaders as well as state and federal decision makers to provide an integrated framework for developing environmental sensor networks in coastal areas.

CESN is unique in its development of "smart" underwater networks ranging from ecological to military to recreational. With several deployments at their doorstep in the Boston Harbor, CESN has truly crossed the land-water barrier! Taking advantage of their unique surroundings, CESN has deployments operating in the 900MHz frequency range using Crossbow's MICA2 motes, MDA Mote data acquisition boards coupled with salt marsh moisture sensors, temp, light, sound, humidity, smart cameras, etc...to gather data previously unobtainable in low cost marine data buoys. This testbed of Crossbow Mote based Micro Buoys showcases the ability to integrate sensor modalities and deployment packages into marine environments.

Coastal environmental sensing networks will provide the ability to support environmental decision-making processes - this includes the ability to observe the complex interactions of coastal systems of "hotspots and hot moments" where the nodes can focus on objects and events of interest. Using Crossbow's Stargate platform, researchers have been able to work cooperatively with the USGS to provide visual monitoring of current river stages and dam status. The integration is accomplished using a DSL service with existing USGS phone lines. This allows for high bandwidth data haul to UMASS and the Stargate uplink to receive data from the mesh network environment.CESN is targeting the set-up of a multi-cluster mesh network based on Crossbow's mote and sensor architecture. The possibilities are endless. Where there is a mote...there is a way!

Comments

[Keith Biesecker]

Very interested in the design of this system. We are a non-profit organization working on some IR&D that will involve systems operating under similar conditions (marine environment). Any information that UMASS might wish to provide about CESN would be extremely valuable. All research/information would be creditd appropriately.

Please contact Keith Biesecker (kbieseck@noblis.org).

Thank you.