Pervasive Communication Lab
Sensor Data Collection using Unmanned Aircraft
Sensor networks promise a future of dense, energy-efficient in situ measurements for wildlife tracking, forest fire management, and reconaissance. But the phenomena to be observed are often distant from the users doing the observing, and reliable backhaul networks may be expensive, insecure or impossible. Our work in sensor data collection seeks to solve this problem by using unmanned aircraft as gateways that can relay data from sensor networks to sensor monitors. We have implemented lightweight and modular protocols for this delay-tolerant networking. Our field tests use battery-powered single board computers and 802.11 WiFi. Ongoing work in this area is the design of a reliable ARQ transport protocol for the unique wireless channel characteristics of the unmanned aircraft and the further improvement of our protocols. This work is a collaboration with CU's Research and Engineering Center for Unmanned Vehicles recuv@colorado.
Publications
1. Sensor Data Collection through Unmanned Aircraft Gateways, AIAA Infotech@Aerospace 2007 Conference and Exhibit, 7 - 10 May 2007, Rohnert Park, California download
2. Sensor data collection through gateways in a highly mobile mesh network. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, 2784-2789, 2007.download