September 18, 2006 — The USC Viterbi School's Information Sciences Institute will play the lead role in a NASA project that will use space satellites to capture data from sensor networks, and flexibly structure the data for effective use by scientists. One possibe early investigation is to use the technique for a more detailed monitoring of climate, and microclimates.
 

Aaron Falk: SSG will support "a broad set of science missions."

Aaron Falk, a project leader in ISI's computer network division, is principal investigator.  He notes that technology to create networks made up of individual, autonomous environmental sensor monitors that communicate with each other has matured in recent years.

Falk says the $1.5 million Satellite Sensornet Gateway (SSG) will bridge a gap that now holds back optimal use of such networks by connecting "local sensornets -- which may be broadband, wireless, and populated by many sensors -- with satellite networks which, through their long reach, allow data archiving, management, and commanding at a network operations center convenient to the scientist."

As conceived, SSG will consist of a standard component system that can drop into any local sensornet to communicate between network and satellite. But SSG won't just collect and store data. Instead, it will all process it to make it easily and transparently accessible anywhere. Moreover, the processing won't just be a single, pre-set mode:

"A key benefit of our design is its ability to accommodate a broad set of science missions and be rapidly reconfigured as user requirements change."

And also, promises Falk, the result will be "a system that does not require the scientist-user to be a communication or software engineer." The bottom line: "In-situ sensors will become easier to deploy and manage, expanding their use by Earth scientists."

The proposal ticks off the advantages of SGG.

• The gateway is open and extensible because it will have software and hardware interfaces with public specifications and it

  SSG Schema: from field to lab via satellite

  will have a plug-in, modular software architecture that allows easy extension to new sensors and new communication paths.
• It is flexible because it may support many different sensors, largely independent of the measurements they make, by relying on a common wireless interface.
• It is scalable because the use of wireless interfaces accommodates a large number of sensors.
• It is economical because system development time and cost will be reduced since scientists will not need to design new systems for data backhaul and data aggregation will allow expensive long-haul links to be used more effectively.
  

The timetable calls for demonstration of a prototype after
three years.

SSG builds on the cyberinfrastructure of another ongoing project, the NSF-funded National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON).

NEON, an NSF Major Research Facilities and Construction Project that may reach $200 million in funding, is planned as continental-size sensor network designed to collect data to monitor the effects that land-use and meteorological changes have on the environment. It anticipates deploying hundreds of sensors over dozens of sites to measure changes in the air, soil and water in wildlands and other locations throughout the country.

Falk is leading a three-year ISI effort to build NEON on-site embedded infrastructure, in addition to the SSG project. A prototype NEON sensor network created in the James Reserve on Southern California's San Jacinto mountain range may serve as a testbed for SSG.

In addition, SSG will use information gained developing NEON, and like NEON will develop a science advisory board. The initial membership will include a member from the NEON board, Prof. Deborah Estrin, director of the UCLA Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, and other scientist-researchers who will work with SSG, including Prof. Sassan Saatchi, senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs; and Stephen Talabac, lead technologist with the Science Data Systems Branch at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

The SSG project is one of 28 investigations funded by NASA recently under its Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) proram.