Our physical world presents an incredibly rich set of observation modalities. Recent advances in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enable the continuous monitoring of various physical phenomena at unprecedented high spatial densities and long time durations, hence opening exciting new opportunities for numerous scientific endeavors. Since sensor nodes are unattended and batterypowered, network monitoring/tomography from indirect measurements at the sink(s) and energy conservation are critical in the deployment of large-scale environmental WSNs. Therefore, a viable framework for energy-efficient network monitoring and data collection is fundamentally important to significantly improve WSN management/operations and reduce its deployment costs.
This project investigates the energy-efficient network monitoring/tomography and data collections in large-scale outdoor WSNs, based on the recent breakthrough of compressed sensing (CS) through an integrated theoretical and empirical approach. The project studies WSN topology tomography for dynamic routing under wireless link dynamics due to channel fading and interference. The objectives of this project are to develop a novel and rigorous framework of topology tomography for real-world WSNs operated in highly noisy communication environments. Dynamic routing topology recovery algorithms are devised for both complete indirect measurements and incomplete indirect measurements received at the sink(s). The accuracy of the tomography approach is studied both analytically and empirically. The developed WSN topology tomography framework can be essential not only for WSN's routing improvement, topology control, hot spot elimination, and anomaly detection in practice, but also for emerging CS-based data collection. This approach extends the current CS technology to form a unified framework for network tomography and data collection in large-scale WSNs, upon which energy-efficient WSN topology tomography and data gathering protocol suite is developed. The developed framework and protocol suite will be validated and evaluated in a real-world environmental WSN testbed in a hilly watershed.
The project intends to create a new paradigm of optimal design, development, and management/operations for large-scale WSNs to significantly extend their lifetime. This would lead to a substantial reduction of the prohibitive cost of large-scale WSN deployments for scientific, civic, national security, and military purposes in the near future. The project creates an interdisciplinary educational practice for both undergraduate and graduate students through hands-on experience with a real-world WSN testbed. The outreach includes summer camps and scientific projects for school students using the WSN testbed.
