Miniature Wireless Ecological Networks, Scalable - MWENS

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This award supports the intial phase of a planned 4 year project that seeks to investigate, develop, and report on the technical and scientific merit of designing and deploying, at scale, very small integrated environmental monitoring systems. These will consist of integrated digital radios, sensors, and power systems that are able to link to the internet for bi-directional data flow, and to link to such projected research networks as the planned national ecological observatory network (NEON). This entire project has as its goal the development of an entirely new scalable paradigm of no-license networked wireless connectivity. The initial work, to be funded through this award, will entail developing design parameters for classes of very small radios integrated with networking protocols, miniaturized configurable processors, interchangeable sensors, and advanced power supplies. An important component of the effort will be a first-hand assessment of the needs of field researchers working in a variety of ecosystems and physical environments. This project,which is made possible by recent advances in electromagnetic wave propagation and evolving rules for no-license use of digital radios, has the potential to give access to principal researchers, collaborators, students, and the general public to raw, as well as processed and stored, field data - in the form of numbers, audio, and video. It will also introduce large numbers of people to the potential of advanced wireless technology for science.