SnowFort: An Open Source Wireless Sensor Network for Data Analytics in Infrastructure and Environmental Monitoring

Abstract

SnowFort, an open source wireless sensor network (WSN) for data analytics, is proposed for monitoring infrastructure and environment. The wireless sensing unit is optimized to be low power for extremely long-term deployments. Several features, such as data compression and online reconfiguration, are introduced to further reduce power consumption. A low-power WSN over optimized time division multiple access scheme is designed to be scalable and reliable for a network with hundreds of sensors. Real-time data visualization and analytical tools are provided with a representational state transfer (RESTful) application programming interface. We utilize SnowFort to develop a real-time damage detection application in structural health monitoring. We develop a distributed algorithm robust to data loss and validate it in a laboratory setup.