In situ measurement of geosensors in low-rate networks

Abstract

Geographic information system (GIS) is traditionally used with desktop computers. The development of embedded, wireless, and positioning technologies have opened possibilities to apply GIS in new application areas and conditions. In this research area interoperability issues have been regognized to be one of the main challenges of in situ measurements in geosensor network (GSN) when using low-rate communication. We will present in this paper our first experiences about how to use geosensor network nodes and interoperable communication together with our location-aware system platform called Locawe. In the designed system GSN nodes are supporting IPv6 Packets over IEEE 802.15.4 (6LoWPAN) specification and are integrated with a GPS receiver. In addition in the designed system, GSN nodes can be used with mobile devices based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorML standard and Binary XML best practices specification. As a result interoperable communication was tested successfully with two different kinds of mobile devices. On the other hand results show that better compressions are still needed for more efficient communication in low-rate networks.

Collecting and visualizing wireless geosensor data using mobile devices

“…The platform is a client-server solution where data collection, transmission and communication happen in real time over GPRS/3G [14]. The Locawe platform has been evaluated during the design process in various field experiments [12,13].…”

“…As a result the Locawe architecture has been presented in [15] and the use of geosensor network related standards in [14]. The next steps in this cycle have currently been in building a test system which is consisting of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN) supported mobile devices and geosensor nodes and which is supporting global geospatial standards.…”

“…Typically existing geosensor network implementations such as above are created based on remote monitoring tasks but not on in situ measurements [4,24]. According to Luimula et al [14] in situ measurements can be defined as an extension of existing remote monitoring implementations and on the other hand in next generation GIS services in low-rate networks based on interoperable communication. Possible application areas for this use case can be found from the maintenance field work, learning natural sciences and monitoring the environment where people live [3,10,25].…”