CAREER: Exploiting Sensing Diversity and Conquering Communication Reality to Meet User Requirements in Performance-Critical Wireless Sensor Networks

无线传感器网络(WSNs)是一类重要的新型网络系统，它将感知、通信和计算能力集成在一个廉价的单一平台上。巨大的规模和与环境的深度整合使无线传感器网络能够以前所未有的时空粒度监控物理世界和人类主体。为性能关键型应用设计的无线传感器网络必须满足用户对感知和通信性能的要求，例如高检测概率、低虚警率以及有限的时间延迟和吞吐量。如果不能满足这些要求，往往会导致不良甚至灾难性的后果。在实际部署中，必须解决感知多样性，即部署中单个传感器或传感器簇之间的感知能力差异，以及有损、不规则和异质的无线传感器网络通信现实。在这个项目中，提出了三个研究方向和七个详细的研究任务，以利用感知分集和征服通信现实，以确保在性能关键的无线传感器网络中满足用户请求的感知和通信性能。这项研究将能够满足多个关键应用领域的性能要求，包括国土安全和监视、医疗保健和辅助生活、自然和物理危险检测等，即使在部署环境中存在复杂性和不确定性的情况下也是如此。它将使心理学家能够收集以前无法获得的数据，以推进他们的生理和心理健康研究。它还将使社区和卫生保健提供者受益于他们的老年驾驶和老龄化项目。老年居民和当地退休社区的福利将通过与老龄和老年健康卓越中心的合作提供。这个项目还将被整合到三门课程中，让本科生和研究生接触先进的传感器网络和系统设计。它将把心理学和计算机科学的学生聚集在一起，致力于将无线传感器网络技术应用于老年人的生理和心理健康研究。一系列计划中的为期一周的日间夏令营和年度开放日活动将为不同的少数族裔学生和高中生提供实践机会。通过NCWIT分发这项提案的研究成果将有助于增加计算机领域的女性人数。

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are an important new class of networked systems that integrate sensing, communication, and computation capabilities on a single, inexpensive platform. The significant scale and deep integration with their environments enable WSNs to monitor the physical world and human subjects with an unprecedented spatial and temporal granularity. WSNs designed for performance-critical applications must achieve user requirements on both sensing and communication performance, such as high detection probabilities, low false alarm rates, and bounded time delays and throughputs. Failure to meet these requirements often leads to undesirable or even catastrophic consequences. In a real deployment, both the sensing diversity, i.e., the sensing capability differences among individual sensors or sensor clusters in the deployment, and the lossy, irregular, and heterogeneous WSN communication reality must be addressed. In this project, three research thrusts with seven detailed research tasks are proposed to exploit sensing diversity and conquer communication reality so as to ensure user-requested sensing and communication performance in performance-critical WSNs. This research will enable meeting performance requirements in a number of critical application domains, including homeland security and surveillance, healthcare and assisted living, natural and physical hazard detection, etc., even when complexity and uncertainty exist in the deployed environment. It will enable psychologists to collect previously unattainable data for advancing their physiological and mental health research. It will also benefit community and health providers for their geriatric driving and aging projects. Benefits to senior residents and local retirement communities will be delivered through collaboration with the Center for Excellence in Aging and Geriatric Health. This project will also be integrated into three courses to expose undergraduate and graduate students to advanced sensor networking and system designs. It will bring students in psychology and students in computer science together to work on applying WSN technologies to physiological and mental health study of older adults. A series of planned week-long day camps and annual open houses will provide hands-on opportunities to a diverse group of minority students and high-schoolers. Distributing the research-based outcomes of this proposal through NCWIT will help increase the number of women in the field of computing.