Sensors can produce valuable data about groundwater, soil emissions, tremors, snowpack temperatures, cloud formation, and many other Earth system features. The sensors are generally quite cheap, but retrieving their data is a challenge, especially from remote locations.
Across the United States, many research projects are situated at mountain meadows, desert valleys, and other locations with poor or no commercial cellular service. Therefore, scientists have hitherto been dependent on improvised methods for data collection.
Quite a few still rely on a “sneaker net” – visiting their devices regularly to swap out memory sticks or hard drives. This could soon become history. A U.S. government organization focused on scientific networking, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), with 15,000 miles of dedicated fiber-optic cable has expanded to the “wireless edge,” offering a portable private cellular unit that will dramatically simplify connectivity for remote sensor sites.
“We’re focused both on reducing the costs and uncertainty associated with sensor deployments, and on making it easier for researchers to retrieve these important data and keep them available to the DOE (Department of Energy, ed.) ecosystem,” says Andrew Wiedlea, ESnet Science Engagement Acting Group lead and Wireless Edge project lead. “For ESnet, it’s about extending our expertise in fiber-optic networking hardware — and in co-designing custom networking solutions for DOE-funded scientists — to create a set of mobile wireless resources that we can easily deploy to field sites or utilize at the national labs.”
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Submitted by Morten Anderson
