Design, Deployment, and Analysis of Sustainable Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring
Jayant Kumar Taneja · 2007
Design, Deployment, and Analysis of Sustainable Sensor Networks for Environmental Monitoring by Jayant Kumar Taneja Master of Science in Computer Science University of California at Berkeley Professor David Culler, Research Advisor We provide a guide through the process of designing, deploying, and analyzing a micro-solar powered wireless sensor network for the purpose of environmental monitoring. We provide a general methodology for translating scientific requirements to system guidelines and describe a Fourier analysis-based method for evaluating these guidelines. For grounding, we describe our experience designing and developing a microclimate monitoring node in support of the HydroWatch project, a collaborative effort between atmospheric scientists, integrative biologists, chemists, and computer scientists, whose goal is to create long-duration, multimodal, and spatially-dense datasets of environmental information. Analysis of these datasets will lead to the construction of a model of the life cycle of water in a forest environment. For designing the power subsystem of our node, we formulate a general model to assist in capacity planning and component selection and sizing of micro-solar power subsystems. We present results evaluating the performance of our system deployed at multiple locations, including a forest watershed at the Angelo Reserve in Northern California. We also discuss improvements for our overall system to enable long-lived sensor networks that produce scientifically-relevant data perpetually.