b.

Research Activities to be Enabled

1. Introduction

Advances in environmental sensor, communication, and computing technology are

transforming our understanding of environmental processes on a global scale. International,
national and regional initiatives are developing new sensors and data streaming technologies to
measure changes in environmental conditions that are central to the health and well-being of
countries across the globe [Estrin et al. 2003]
Despite the promise that new cyber-technologies hold, there are a number of challenges to
supporting investigations needed to advance this new field. Scientists and engineers rarely have
access to distributed network complexes and high-performance simulation tools needed to
explore new phenomena (NSF 2007). This is especially true for predominantly undergraduate
institutions and communities [Estrin et al. 2003].
SSU (Sonoma State University) is dedicated to excellence in STEM research training. Among
the 23 California State University (CSU) campuses, SSU (about 8,900 students, 373 full-time
faculty) has a reputation for high-quality, small class room settings. Faculty routinely engage
students as co-authors at regional and national conferences. SSU and its collaborators propose
to develop a high-performance environmental observatory that creates new research and
training opportunities in energy-efficient environmental sensing and analysis in northern
California. SonNET (Sonoma Network for Environmental Technology) will work with
business and non-profit partners to link SSU to four existing research sites within 60 miles of
campus. Sensors at each site measure environmental changes in air chemistry, nocturnal
illumination, water quality and flow, sound, images, and weather. Sensor data will be streamed
across intra- and inter-site wireless networks to SSU’s data center and made available to
researchers and for integration with regional data sets via an energy-efficient super-computer
and visualization laboratory.
SonNET is pro-actively integrated with SSU research training programs. All students in the
School of Science and Technology are required to undertake an independent senior project.
These existing programs will be used to encourage cross-disciplinary studies among students.
The departments of Biology, Computer Science, Engineering Science, Geography and Global
Studies and Geology will advertize the availability of SonNET computers, networks, and
sensors and encourage students to undertake cross-disciplinary studies using SonNET - the
undergraduates engaged in senior projects (approximately 80 students per year) and thesis
graduate students working on their thesis (approximately 30 each year).
SSU campus culture and strategic planning promotes faculty engagement in research
partnerships with local industries and community service projects. To enhance and support
existing faculty engagement with agency, community, and governmental research partnerships,
SonNET creates a network of standard sensors that has broad applicability to the study of
human-environment interaction. The sensors suite (listed below) that measures environmental
variables commonly altered by human activities will be installed at 4 sites already extensively
used by SSU faculty and others for research and training. The suite of sensors enhances the
value of other long-term data sets at the sites (e.g., biotic surveys) and attracts new research to
these areas. For example, undergraduates at the Santa Rosa Community College, under the
guidance and direction of Shawn Brumbaugh (Table 1), will conduct long-term vertebrate
population monitoring at each of the four research sites so that they can relate changes in
abundance and distribution of organisms with changes in weather, air chemistry, water quality,
sound and nocturnal illumination.
Sensor-based research opportunities encompass a broad range of disciplines including
population and behavioral ecology, ecosystem processes and engineering fields including
energy monitoring and optimization, computational problems involving data management,
image storage, analysis and rendering. The specific suite of sensors proposed for SonNET
targets perturbations to the environment caused by human activities. These include a broad
range of research opportunities including effects of land use patterns and weather on air
chemistry (ozone and nitrogen-oxide sensors), acoustic ecology, the physics of sound
characterization, and bird and frog call monitoring (digital microphones), watershed processes
including sediment processes and predictions of climate-related changes in water availability
(flow sensors), behavioral studies of aquatic organisms (cameras), and long-term changes in
climate.
In the next section, we describe in more technical detail some of the research activities that
will be enabled by the network instrumentation sought. In section 3, we present a summary of
various research groups (on and off campus) that will find significant use for the new
networking hardware and instruments.
2. Some Core Research Projects in Detail
2.1. Wireless Networking Research: Several on-going projects in wireless networks will be
enhanced by this grant. Two such projects are described below:
(i) Vehicular Delay Tolerant Networks: Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Network (VDTN) is an
application of a mobile delay tolerant network where vehicles are opportunistically exploited to
offer a message relaying service. VDTN can also offer an alternative platform for information-
based applications, including sensor data collection (water quality, disease), weather forecast
distribution systems, and social and community network building. This is a collaborative
research project of Dr. Farahmand of SSU with the Universidade da Beira Interior, in
Portugal, and the University of Texas at Dallas. Four PhD students and two Master students are
currently involved in this project to investigate various challenges in VDTN.
(ii) Energy-aware grooming for wireless networks: We study ways to reduce energy
consumption in sensor network by investigating the impact of packet grooming and packet
burstification as well as including sleeping modes to transmission devices. We also investigate
energy aware routing techniques in order to reduce the total network energy consumption of
the network. Energy-awareness in networks provides savings in terms of not only electricity,
but also other tangible operations and maintenance costs. Currently, two graduate students are
assisting us in this project.
2.2. Research in Energy Monitoring and Optimization: The tight integration of SonNET’s
sensors, network backbone, and back-end processing enables us to examine the end-to-end
energy efficiency and total cost of ownership of hardware and algorithmic design choices.
Research projects in this area include:
• Developing metrics of end-to-end energy efficiency, from the sensors to the
supercomputers processing the data, as well as methods of assessing the tradeoffs
between quality and quantity of data and the end-to-end costs of the system.
 • Developing novel data compression methods. The SonNET project presents an
opportunity for faculty-student collaborative research into novel data compression
methods to manage the tremendous volumes of data collected from the many sensors,
microphones, cameras, and other devices, potentially exploiting domain-specific
knowledge from the scientists collecting the data.
• Assessing the usability of novel parallel programming models. In keeping with
SonNET’s focus on cost- and energy-efficiency, we are targeting graphics processor-
based machines for the data processing because of their very low cost [Lindholm08].
While a variety of programming models have been proposed to harness the power of
these systems, research into programmers’ productivity with parallel programming
models has only begun, and has not yet extended to graphics processors.
2.3. Research in GIS, Visualization and Data Mining: SonNET will provide a dense array
of sensors distributed at local (e.g, reserve) to regional (e.g., county) spatial scales, with each
sensor providing a temporally-rich data stream. These data can be readily visualized and
queried with geographic information systems (GIS). GIS also provides tools for modeling and
spatial interpolation using environmental data from SonNET and other regional sensor points.
For example, temperature readings combined with sensor point locations can be processed with
geostatistical tools, such as kriging, to provide continuous temperature maps at regular time
intervals, or as an animation. Furthermore, these types of environmental surfaces can be used
in geospatial modeling, such as predicting risk or spread of Sudden Oak Death (SOD) [Rizzo et
al. 2005].
The SonNET data stream will flow to centralized servers at SSU, making these data well-
suited for server-based GIS technology. This technology is developing rapidly and is currently
supported by open-source and commercial software packages, such as ESRI’s ArcGIS Server.
ArcGIS Server capabilities include: 1) dynamic map services that allow visualization and
query of SonNET’s GIS datasets within a standard web browser or “geobrowser” (e.g., Google
Earth), 2) mash-up of SonNET’s GIS map service with layers from other map services (e.g,
Google Maps high-resolution imagery), 3) distributed GIS layers managed in a central and
secure relational database (e.g., Oracle), and available for direct consumption in a user’s
desktop GIS, 4) online geoprocessing tools that allow a user to manipulate model parameters
and see map results on the map service, and 5) a rich suite of tools for building applications
that connect ArcGIS Server to wireless devices. The SSU campus currently has a site license
for ArcGIS Server for educational and research activities. As part of his current NSF research,
Dr. Clark of SSU uses ArcGIS Server for visualizing in Google Earth his land-use data
products derived from satellite imagery. An area of research for computer science and
Engineering science students will be to create user interface for accessing these data son hand-
held devices such as ipod.
A more advanced research project in visualization will be to create 3-d models of the preserves
by integrating terrain data, sensor data and satellite image data and provide immersive view or
virtual tour of the preserves.
2.4. Cross-disciplinary collaborations for environmental technology: Sudden Oak Death
has reached epidemic levels in coastal forests of northern California over the last 10 years,
killing large numbers of oak and tanoak trees. Drs. Meentemeyer and Rank are studying the
transmission of the disease. Over 200 temperature/ humidity loggers and 15 rain gauges collect
data from in wooded areas in the 270 sq km study area to allow the researchers to interpolate
microclimate conditions throughout the study area. The project presents two significant
engineering challenges. (1) the sensors are not accurate enough to measure variations in rain
data or humidity, and (2) sensors cannot provide health reports needed for maintenance. These
two challenges will be the initial cross-disciplinary project addressed by SonNET cross
disciplinary team and their students.
3. SonNET components targeted by researchers for immediate use
To ensure that the instruments will be fully utilized, an initial team of researchers from SSU
and other institutions has identified each of SonNET’s components (sensors, networks, data
storage, computing, and visualization) for immediate use in research or research training in
biology, hydrology, chemistry, acoustics, astronomy, sensor development, data compression,
network efficiency, GIS, energy-efficient computing, and visualization (Table 1).
Initial sensors independently sponsored by other grants that would link to and benefit by
SonNET include the GLAST Optical Robotic Telescope (GORT) at the Pepperwood Preserve.
GORT was built to monitor active galaxies and gamma-ray bursts. A second larger observatory
is proposed for construction at the Galbreath Wildlands Preserve (est. cost $1.6 million) with
funding included in current congressional request.
Ability to remotely accurately monitor night-time weather conditions is currently a limiting
factor for use of the GORT telescope. SonNET will provide improved weather and sky
monitoring to increase the ability of the robotic telescope to determine when conditions allow
observations. SonNET will support the new Galbreath Observatory by providing data transfer
and remote control.