Hardware platform for wireless geophysical monitoring

Geophysical inspection methods are used in many fields to evaluate the integrity of earthen structures (e.g., earth dams, underground tunnels) without drilling or boring. Traditional geophysical surveys are completed manually and, thus, are time consuming, laborious, and expensive; these facts result in infrequent geophysical inspection, which decreases the overall effectiveness of the monitoring goals. Our contribution enables cost effective and continuous geophysical monitoring through the development of a new wireless hardware platform for geophysical measurements. In this work, we present our design specifications and requirements of gsMote, our wireless geophysical hardware platform. We use earth dam management to motivate the development of gsMote. Additionally, we discuss how our gsMote platform enables other geophysical monitoring applications, such as bioremediation.