The communications and networking capability at the three-year round United States Antarctic stations has improved over the past decade to include Internet access and bandwidth capability for modern scientific research and communications purposes. Challenges remain to provide similar access to remote field camps. Providing networking capability to field camps in the McMurdo Dry Valleys and other sites near McMurdo and South Pole Stations would allow scientists at those camps to conduct their research in a more efficient manner. In particular, networks would provide scientists with not only the benefit of connectivity to the Internet, but also better methods of data retrieval from sensors and interactions with experiment hardware. T The latter would allow for an expansion of data collection activities over the winter period, and thus allow for year round data collection and retrieval. The intent of the workshop is to bring together a group of interested parties, including experienced investigators from Antarctic, CISE and engineering communities. The purpose will be to identify specific problems in Antarctic communications and networking, to summarize current and projected states of wireless, sensor and power technologies for field locations, to identify solutions where possible and to design a way forward to solve remaining problems. The product of the workshop will be a report of the meeting, a PowerPoint presentation for use by the community, a website for easy access to the results of the workshop and a listserv for continuing discussion. This interdisciplinary activity is expected to lead to improvements in the ability of scientists to conduct their research in Antarctica.
