HR: 17:45h
AN: IN24A-08 [Abstracts]
TI: Sensor Processing and Acquisition Network for Environmental Observation Systems
AU: * Ye, W
EM: weiye@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AU: Silva, F
EM: fabio@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AU: DeSchon, A
EM: deschon@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AU: Falk, A
EM: falk@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AU: Pradkin, Y
EM: yuri@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AU: Bhatt, S
EM: spundun@isi.edu
AF: USC, Information Sciences Institute, 4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 1001, Marina del Rey, CA
90292, United States
AB:
Technology advancements in sensor networks enable the development of
long-term, in-situ observation systems to support earth sciences and
ecological research. This work describes a major effort at USC/ISI
in developing the Sensor Processing and Acquisition Network (SPAN), a
core technology to build observation systems for a wide range of
scientific applications. We will present the SPAN architecture, explain its
major components, and show examples of a few deployed prototype systems.
Our design decisions for SPAN emphasize important system properties such
as robustness, flexibility, ease of use, and extensibility. First, to support long-term
deployments, SPAN employs a rugged data acquisition platform, such as the
CompactRIO from National Instruments, which provides robust sensor data
collection under various environmental conditions. We developed command
and status protocols that allow monitoring the system status and
handling potential component failures. In addition, our data protocol provides a complete solution on reliable data
buffering, transfer, and archiving.
Second, the SPAN system is very flexible and supports different types
of analog and digital sensors, which are used by different application domains.
We have designed data management protocols that provide simple and
unified interfaces for different types of sensors.
Third, SPAN is designed to be used by scientists who may not always be
networking or software experts. Our system provides comprehensive tools,
with intuitive user interfaces so that scientists can control data
sampling activity, monitor the system health, and reconfigure system
components.
Finally, we have designed SPAN to be extensible so that it can be used in
short and long-term deployments of varying scales. A small-scale
deployment, which may include just one CompactRIO and a number
of motes (for distributed sensing), is a low-cost solution for individual scientists.
It can be easily customized and deployed at different locations. Such a
system can also be extended to support a small team of scientists that
collect data in the same area. In comparison, a large-scale deployment
can be achieved by deploying multiple CompactRIOs at many different
locations, which are then connected through the Internet.
Such an infrastructure is likely to be shared by a large number of
scientists, and can provide access to a rich set of environmental
sensors with geographically diverse settings.
DE: 1895 Instruments and techniques: monitoring
DE: 3094 Instruments and techniques
DE: 7294 Seismic instruments and networks (0935, 3025)
DE: 9820 Techniques applicable in three or more fields
SC: Earth and Space Science Informatics [IN]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting