A Sensor Infrastructure

An information technology revolution for the life sciences, as well as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, and agriculture is the emergence of tiny micro-sensors that can be deployed in vast networks to obtain environmental data at unprecedented spatial and temporal density. The instrumentation is placed within the experiment, rather than the experiment being performed within an instrument. Starting from visionary work in SmartDust, we have developed a series of small wireless sensor nodes, a TinyOS operating system, and complete low-power RF network stack and have made all aspects openly available. There are now nearly a hundred groups internationally using our technology for research spanning from networking to in depth habitat monitoring and emergency response. Although individual data rates are low, the sheer number of devices connected continuously to the physical world generate a tremendous amount of data. Moreover, given the power and resource constraints of these devices, processing must be performed within the network itself so that only the most valuable information is transmitted and every bit of information that is conveyed is precious enough to be stored. There is a wide range of open problems associated with the potential merging of database and networking technology, and we have developed an initial TinyDB which transforms the vast network of tiny devices into a streaming, interactive database. The number of potential applications of this technology is staggering and we need to build a deep storage infrastructure to capture the volumes of streaming sensor data in a manner that makes it available to processing and web access.

We have completed substantial deployments in areas of monitoring structural response to seismic shock, indoor environmental monitoring, and long term monitoring of the nesting habits of certain migrating seabirds. Each of these efforts presents the opportunity to obtain a vast amount of data that was previously unobtainable. The existence of such information is leading scientist-users to develop new analysis techniques, progress on which is furthered by the retention of all possible data. Eventually, the data processing algorithms will be distributed over the sensor network itself.