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8/6/2019 A Wireless Sensor City - Technology Review

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Sensor City: This image shows hypotheticallocations for wireless sensor nodes in the cityof Cambridge, MA. Ultimately, 100 sensor nodes mounted on telephone poles couldcollect data on pollutants, weather, and traffic.Researchers have already installed suchnodes on Harvard's campus and near BBNTechnologies corporate offices, but they planto add about 90 more throughout Cambridge.One of the first pr ojects to use the network willmonitor airborne pollution near industrial sites.

Sensor Node : This sensor node,on a rooftop at BBN Technologies,is composed of sensors (left) andcomputer hardware--which inc ludesa PC that runs the Linux operatingsystem and two Wi-Fi radios--housed in a weatherproof case(white box on right).

Credit: Josh Bers, BBN.

FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2007 BY KATE GREENE

C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

A Wireless Sensor City A wireless-sensor network to report pollutionand traffic comes to Cambridge, MA.

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Engineers at Harvard and BBN Technologies areworking on a project that will cover the c ity of Cambridge, MA, with wireless-sensor nodesmounted to telephone poles that could allowresearchers to see the specific locations and timesof day when pollution peaks. The researchers couldalso track the city's weather with more prec ision andhelp test new wireless technology for better W i-Fi.The network, called CitySense , will be an open testbed on which anyone can run experiments, saysMatt Welsh , a professor o f computer science atHarvard.

The plan is to install 100 general-purpose nodes

onto the streetlights of Cambridge, drawing power from the city's infrastructure. Already there are fiveinstalled on Harvard's campus and five at BBN'sfacilities. Each node will be relatively large--about thesize of a Mac Mini computer. A node will include aPC that runs the Linux operating system and acouple of gigabytes of flash memory as a hard drive.And instead of using a common low-power wireless-sensor pro tocol called Zigbee, CitySense nodes willuse standard Wi-Fi radios; two radios will be in eachnode, one for management and control of thenetwork, and the other for experiments. And, Welshsays, virtually any type of sensor will be able toconnect to the nodes.

A first batch of sensors will collect weather data suchas rainfall, wind speed , and barometric pressure.Another set of sensors will measure pollution suchas the amount of particles in the air. Researcherscould use the weather data to understand how

temperature or wind speed vary throughout the city, and doctors could use the pollutiondata to advise patients with asthma to stay away from cer tain areas at certain times of day. Eventually, more sensors could be incorporated: for example, motion sensors couldmeasure traff ic flow, and light sensors s cattered throughout the city could monitor parking spaces; the data would be uploaded to the CitySense network. "With somethinglike CitySense," Welsh says, "we're going to be able to blanket the city with sensors andget a much more complete sense of what's going on."

Welsh expects that CitySense will, in addition to collecting and transmitting sensor data,be employed by computer sc ientists to test new network sof tware and protocols, whichcould be used to help make Wi-Fi connections more robust. Currently, the only way totest new wireless protocols, says Welsh, is to run them on a computer s imulation. ButCitySense could be thought of as "an open laboratory," he says, where researchers canupload and run their programs, collect data, and write papers.

The payoff of having an openly availablewireless network like CitySense could begreat, says Thomas Little , a professor of electrical and computer engineeringat Boston University. "The existence of a wireless backbone like CitySensebecomes an enormous asset," he says."There are very interesting opportunitiesto exploit," he adds, including businessopportunities. He envisions being able tointegrate all sorts of sensors into theCitySense backbone, such as those that

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TAGS HARVARD NETWORKS POLLUTION SENSOR WI-FI WIRELESS WIRELESSNETWORK

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track the position of public transportation--which could help people know when the nextbus is coming--and even video cameras that could monitor anything from traffic to urbanwildlife.

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