Villalba German, Plaza Fernando, Zhong Xiaoyang, Davis Tyler W, Navarro Miguel, Li Yimei, Slater Thomas A, Liang Yao, Liang Xu
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, 3700 O'Hara Street, 728 Benedum Engineering Hall, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.
Department of Computer and Information Science, Indiana University Purdue University, 723 West Michigan Street, SL 280, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA.
Sensors (Basel). 2017 Mar 20;17(3):636. doi: 10.3390/s17030636.
This study presents the latest updates to the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP) testbed, a $50,000 USD, 104-node outdoor multi-hop wireless sensor network (WSN). The network collects environmental data from over 240 sensors, including the EC-5, MPS-1 and MPS-2 soil moisture and soil water potential sensors and self-made sap flow sensors, across a heterogeneous deployment comprised of MICAz, IRIS and TelosB wireless motes. A low-cost sensor board and software driver was developed for communicating with the analog and digital sensors. Innovative techniques (e.g., balanced energy efficient routing and heterogeneous over-the-air mote reprogramming) maintained high success rates (>96%) and enabled effective software updating, throughout the large-scale heterogeneous WSN. The edaphic properties monitored by the network showed strong agreement with data logger measurements and were fitted to pedotransfer functions for estimating local soil hydraulic properties. Furthermore, sap flow measurements, scaled to tree stand transpiration, were found to be at or below potential evapotranspiration estimates. While outdoor WSNs still present numerous challenges, the ASWP testbed proves to be an effective and (relatively) low-cost environmental monitoring solution and represents a step towards developing a platform for monitoring and quantifying statistically relevant environmental parameters from large-scale network deployments.
本研究介绍了西宾夕法尼亚奥杜邦学会（ASWP）测试平台的最新情况，该测试平台是一个价值5万美元、拥有104个节点的户外多跳无线传感器网络（WSN）。该网络通过由MICAz、IRIS和TelosB无线节点组成的异构部署，从240多个传感器收集环境数据，这些传感器包括EC - 5、MPS - 1和MPS - 2土壤湿度和土壤水势传感器以及自制的液流传感器。开发了一种低成本的传感器板和软件驱动程序，用于与模拟和数字传感器进行通信。创新技术（例如，平衡节能路由和异构空中节点重新编程）在整个大规模异构WSN中保持了较高的成功率（>96%），并实现了有效的软件更新。该网络监测的土壤性质与数据记录器的测量结果高度一致，并被拟合到土壤传递函数中，以估计当地土壤水力性质。此外，按林分蒸腾量缩放后的液流测量结果被发现处于或低于潜在蒸散量估计值。虽然户外WSN仍然存在众多挑战，但ASWP测试平台被证明是一种有效且（相对）低成本的环境监测解决方案，代表了朝着开发一个用于从大规模网络部署中监测和量化具有统计相关性的环境参数的平台迈出的一步。
