COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES FOR MONITORING THE GREAT OUTDOORS
Along a flowing creek nestled in the rolling hills of
research is playing out in an outdoor setting that spans
Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County, California,
three thousand acres.
Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers are adapting
“We’re looking at this as a full-system problem, rather
internet of things technologies to alert authorities when
than just a sensor or radio problem,” says Iannucci. He
flooding is imminent.
and his team of Carnegie Mellon graduate students are
This research at a main watershed of the Russian River
adapting low-power, wide-area wireless network (LP-WAN)
is supported by the United States Geological Survey (USGS),
technologies to monitor rural areas. LP-WANs make it
the agency within the Department of the Interior that studies
possible to gather sensor data over large areas at low cost.
the science underneath our nation’s lands and the hazards that threaten them. The USGS and CMU are exploring how sensor systems can be used to monitor major waterways to predict floods and other threats. However, the places that need sensing are often the worst places to install sensors. The earliest indications of potential problems are often found far from civilization—in remote areas that lack readily available power and wireless connectivity. “I’m tempted to say that what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Not only is wireless coverage a problem, there are also power and programming problems,” begins Bob Iannucci, who is leading the research. Iannucci, the director of the CyLab Mobility Research Center at CMU Silicon Valley, explains that to create vast sensor systems, the sensors have to be inexpensive to install and maintain, and their energy source must last for years. While sensors appear to perform simple tasks, programming them to successfully run on ultra-low power presents more complications. Iannucci’s team is addressing low-power operation from the top down, including how to design the sensors, how to engineer the software, and how to internetwork them. The
WHAT WE ARE BUILDING AND WHY
At the heart of the Pepperwood Preserve installation is a solar-powered LP-WAN gateway that relays information between sensor devices at the streams being monitored in Carnegie Mellon laboratories in the Silicon Valley. The sensors, using ultrasonic ranging, measure the height of the streams and send data back through the gateway to CMU servers. The data will be analyzed and the results published on a webpage. Earth science researchers have the ability to remotely alter the schedule the sensors follow so that precious battery energy is only spent when the conditions warrant it. “We are building a system that serves the USGS’ real needs, but it also provides a vehicle for us to do research on lowpower wide-area networks as they scale up,” says Iannucci. In addition to a warning system, the USGS wants a system that preserves historical sensor readings to enable longitudinal studies of how waterway conditions change over time. “Sensing and telemetry [the process of collecting and
