World's Largest Agricultural Wireless Sensor Network

About one month ago, the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) issued a statement that they have deployed the world's largest agricultural wireless sensor network. DPI has taken a pro-active approach to the maintenance and building of Victoria's scientific capability and is committed to the provision of high quality, innovative science and technology to create robust primary industries. A project was launched in July 2006 that is to conclude in June 2008 to evaluate sensor network systems and address a variety of environmental and agricultural issues. The area being tested was a nectarine orchard covered with 273 sensors supported by Crossbow's MoteWorks software platform.

Researchers focused on developing Integrated Smart Sensing Systems to develop the capability of DPI to use wireless sensing and microtechnology to improve the agricultural and environmental outcome in  Victoria. The Orchard study is designed to build capability in a long term, spatially dense sensing environment in which a production system operates and its performance is monitored. Led by the plant production sciences platform staff, the field study examined the effect variability in soil moisture over a growing season on the variability in canopy cover and fruit yield.

The major ISSS capability was to be developed by deploying a WSN which would collect soil moisture measurements at three soil depths, at up to 100 locations, each hour for the duration of the study. Additional sensor information was to be gathered by deployment of more sophisticated sensors in smaller numbers. Measurements of the soil structure, canopy density, local climate, irrigation activity and fruit yield were to be made using conventional techniques and would provide supplementary data on the environment and the product of this horticultural system.

The sensor system used for the orchard deployment consisted of a gateway connected to the internet gathering data from the 433MHz MICA2 Mote platform. The data was collected from the 'weather chip' consisting of temperature, humidity, light, wind speed, wind direction, leaf witness and soil moisture sensors. The initial measures of soil variability and tree canopy would aid in increasing the positive output of the production measures in fruit yield and irrigation usage. Daily network health statistic alerts are sent via SMS to a mobile phone. 

Crossbow’s unique wireless networking solution is an industry first in its ability to integrate the latest wireless mesh technology to collect practical environmental data Air Temperature, Relative Humidity, Location (GPS), Ambient Light, Solar Radiation, Barometric Pressure, Precipitation, Soil Moisture/Temperature, etc. Mesh sensor technology allows scalable range extension by node to node sensor communication. This technology has already been proven in numerous applications and is ideal for deployments where multiple sensor nodes are required. The importance of monitoring our physical environment has never been higher. Many groups from agricultural operators to natural resource developers to biological researchers to homeland security, all need to make reliable, sensitive measurements in remote or dispersed locations. Crossbow's XMesh based wireless solutions and low-cost MEMS based sensor capabilities enable breakthrough environmental monitoring performance for our customers.

Researchers Create New Firefighting Tool - FireBug

Crossbow's  MTS420 GPS weather sensor boards were featured last week on ABC Channel 7 news. For the full article and link to the video newscast, click here:

'Fire season is in full force and there are about six fires currently burning in California. But many technological advances are being made to fight the flames. At U.C. Berkeley researchers have created a new firefighting tool.

"This device is basically a radio, and on top of it is a sensor board which contains GPS," said U.C. Berkeley Professor Nicholas Sitar. Now imagine thousands of these sensors raining down from a helicopter or plane, landing in front of an oncoming wildfire. "Often times in rugged terrain or with lots of smoke it's not possible to see the fire visually," said Sitar. U.C. Berkeley professor Nicholas Sitar is a civil and environmental engineer who teamed up with computer science engineers and the College of Natural Resources to create a wireless sensor network to help fight wildfires.

Now ideally this device would be packaged in a cone shaped casing with a weighted bottom so when it landed the antenna would be pointing up. "Well if that information could get back to a person that was planning the operational approach, it could be real useful," said Chief Ken Blonski from East Bay Regional Parks. The sensors can be displayed on a Google earth map, while they feed temperature and barometric data back to a command center, in real time. "And as the fire front approaches the humidity drops very rapidly then slowly climbs as the fire goes by," said Sitar.

The result: more detailed fire models to predict the fire's speed and direction. Another application is attaching sensors to the firefighters. "Every now and then you have a disaster where fire over runs some people so their relationship to where the fire is obviously is not something they knew otherwise they wouldn't have been there," said Blonski.'

Researchers at the UC Berkeley Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering have created FireBug as a wildfire instrumentation system. The collection of real time data from wildfires is important for life safety considerations and allows predictive analysis of evolving fire behavior. The FireBug system is composed of a network of GPS-enabled, wireless thermal sensors, a control layer for processing sensor data, and a command center for interactively communicating with the sensor network.

Each FireBug consists of a mote/fireboard pair. The motes provide power, radio communications, and processing capability for data collected by the sensor.  The Crossbow MTS420CA, or fireboard, provides the sensing hardware.  The mote and fireboard interface with a 51 pin connector. FireBugs are GPS-enabled, wireless thermal sensors, or motes. The FireBug network self-organizes into edge-hub configurations. Hub motes act as base stations to receive sample data from any mote and send commands to any mote.

FireBug is part of the ITR Fire Project. ITR (Information Technology Research) is a National Science Foundation initiative focused on innovative areas of science, engineering and education with a strong information technology component. Research such as this will help places like California fight the 5,600 wildland fires that burn over 172,000 acres in the state every year!