SensorScope: Out-of the-box environmental monitoring

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.

环境监测是无线传感器网络的一个重要应用领域。鉴于潜在气候变化、环境对城市的影响以及污染的严重性，这是一个传感器网络能够产生重大影响的领域，因此也越来越受到关注。当前的数据采集技术确实相当有限，并且使用非常昂贵的传感站，导致缺乏适当的观测。在本文中，我们介绍SensorScope，这是一个由环境和网络研究人员合作的项目，其目标是提供一个基于无线传感器网络的高效且低成本的开箱即用的环境监测系统。我们特别关注数据采集，并介绍SensorScope的硬件和网络架构。我们还描述了在瑞士一个岩石冰川上进行的一次实际部署以及我们所获得的结果。