Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) offer the promise of comprehensive, inexpensive, reliable monitoring and control of physical environments. Recent technological advances in low-power computation, radios, software environments, and algorithms have made these networks possible, and numerous deployed prototypes in the research community have demonstrated the feasibility and usefulness of these networks in the field. The continuing miniaturization and price decreases of sensor nodes will lead to widespread deployments of sensor networks in the future with a corresponding significant impact in a variety of applications, including those in the agricultural and environmental sciences. Within those fields, WSNs can have a substantial impact in such important areas as habitat, air quality, and watershed monitoring, pesticide use and control, remote sensing validation, and water resources, conservation, and policy. They will do so by allowing agricultural and environmental professionals to have an unprecedented knowledge of the detailed state of their areas of interest.
Our group is concentrating on the design and implementation of a large-scale, multi-user, scalable, ubiquitous sensor network for agricultural and environmental applications called the UC Davis Metanet. My graduate student and colleague Leo Szumel has performed a feasibility study for this network. Scott Goering has recently completed a masters degree analyzing the scalability of a number of WSN routing algorithms.
I am no longer looking for students in this research area but can enthusiastically recommend my colleagues in ECE and CS: Professors Chuah, Zhao, Amirtharajah, Liu, Mukherjee, Pandey, and Ghosal all have done excellent work in this area.
Our work was supported by Leo's fellowship from the Sandia National Laboratories, a Mildred E. Mathias Graduate Student Research Award, a UC Davis Faculty Research Grant, and UC Davis startup funds.