LakeNet: An Integrated Sensor Network for Environmental Sensing in Lakes

Field investigations in the hydrologic sciences often are limited by the ability to collect data at the high spatiotemporal resolution necessary to build accurate predictive models or to control complex engineered systems in real time. Here, we describe LakeNet, an embedded wireless sensor network constructed by an interdisciplinary team of hydrogeologists, environmental engineers, and electrical engineers at the University of Notre Dame. Off-the-shelf temperature, dissolved oxygen, and pH probes are suspended from floating, waterproof cases with electronics, forming sensor pods. Wireless transmission to relay stations and a PC gateway enable researchers to interact with the network remotely to alter sampling patterns, download data, and analyze data trends using the gateway's recursive processing of raw data. LakeNet functions as a “smart” network, in which each pod is aware of surrounding pods. Ongoing research will allow in-network computation to detect change points in the data stream, thus triggering...