A Versatile Distributed Wireless Sensor Network for High Fidelity Data Acquisition and Data Fusion Development

A critical need for the military is the development and fielding of robust distributed wireless sensor networks (WSN’s) that aid the U.S. forces to accurately detect, localize and identify commonly occurring battlefield sources. A versatile, scalable and easy to use distributed WSN development system for high fidelity data acquisition and testing is needed that allows the developers to test out their data fusion algorithms and software. The system must support multiple sensor modalities including acoustics, seismic and IR. In this Phase I research, we propose to develop: (a) new sensor-level hardware/software to provide flexible and configurable data sampling and synchronization, and offer adequate on-board processing and storage capabilities for low-level collaborative signal processing and high fidelity data acquisition; (b) network-level solution that accounts for network connectivity and sensor/network health and supports various routing strategies and adoption of user-defined optimum sensor collaboration and data fusion applications; and (c) system console that allows the developers to select and upload their application-specific tasks via a user-friendly interface. The user can choose several possible modes of operation to examine various factors such reliability, bandwidth and timeliness of data. This research will lead to the development and prototyping of a low-cost WSN system using available ZigBee-based COTS hardware. The effectiveness of the developed system will be demonstrated in a field-testing exercise using 15-20 acoustic sensors for both vehicle and transient event detection and localization.