Unified Hardware and Software for Environmental Monitoring Sensor Networks

Doug Carlson, Johns Hopkins University

Wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring present a set of domain-specific challenges. Their spatially heterogeneous structure and susceptibility to hardware and wireless connectivity failure demand a focused approach.

In this seminar, I will present the “Breakfast” suite of hardware, which enables domain scientists to allocate sensing, communication, and storage functionality in a flexible and natural manner. I will show how one can improve data delivery in the face of node and link failures by using synchronized, non-destructive packet transmissions by a set of nodes rather than single-path routes.

This seminar will explain the challenges of this application domain, present a unified hardware suite that addresses these challenges, and characterize the benefits of our multi-tiered, multi-transmitter networking approach. This work improves on the throughput and energy usage of naive multi-transmitter flooding while maintaining reliability in the face of high levels of node failure and out-of-date link quality information.

Speaker Biography

Doug Carlson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at Johns Hopkins University, where is advised by Dr. Andreas Terzis. He received a B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University in 2004 and spent several years as an IT consultant before joining JHU in 2008. His research focuses on energy-efficient medium access and networking protocols, as well as end-to-end system design for wireless sensor networks.