SensorScope: Out-of-the-Box Environmental Monitoring

• Main Authors: Barrenetxea, Guillermo, Ingelrest, François, Schaefer, Gunnar, Vetterli, Martin, Couach, Olivier, Parlange, Marc
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Batteries; Collaboration; Computer architecture; Computer systems organization > Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks; deployments; environmental monitoring; General and reference > Cross-computing tools and techniques > Performance; Hardware; Hardware > Communication hardware, interfaces and storage > Signal processing systems; Hydrologic measurements; Monitoring; Networks > Network performance evaluation; Networks > Network types > Mobile networks; Networks > Network types > Wireless access networks; Pollution; Predictive models; Spread spectrum communication; Wireless sensor networks
• DOI: 10.1109/IPSN.2008.28

Environmental monitoring constitutes an important field of application for wireless sensor networks. Given the severity of potential climate changes, environmental impact on cities, and pollution, it is a domain where sensor networks can have great impact and as such, is getting more and more attention. Current data collection techniques are indeed rather limited and make use of very expensive sensing stations, leading to a lack of appropriate observations. In this paper, we present SensorScope, a collaborative project between environmental and network researchers, that aims at providing an efficient and inexpensive out-of-the-box environmental monitoring system, based on a wireless sensor network. We especially focus on data gathering and present the hardware and network architecture of SensorScope. We also describe a real-world deployment, which took place on a rock glacier in Switzerland, as well as the results we obtained.