BBN Technologies

BBN Technologies, Harvard University, and the City of Cambridge are collaborating on a wireless sensor network that spans, Cambridge, MA, but will provide access for educational institutions, from kindergartens to graduate schools, all across the U.S.

Educational/Research Resource Funded by NSF

Funded by the National Science Foundation, the network will consist of 100 streetlight-mounted sensor nodes, each equipped with a professional meteorological sensor package for environmental monitoring. The sensors will detect weather measurements, such as wind speed, direction, temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, and rainfall. Radios in the nodes will allow them to communicate across a mesh-network. Through a gateway to the Internet, all data collected will be freely available to academic researchers throughout the U. S. The network will also be an open resource for the sensor network community, giving them the opportunity to test new algorithms for distributed sensor data processing and wireless networking in a real-world environment.

Power Source Enables Multiple Applications

Unlike prior sensor networks, where battery life was the major design constraint, CitySense nodes are powered by city electricity, enabling a range of applications such as real-time environmental monitoring, correlating micro-climates with population health, or tracking the spread of bio-chemical agents. Initial plans for using the network include an urban air pollution study by the Harvard School of Public Health, but six year olds could use the network just as easily to see how urban-planning affects microclimates.

Academic, Industry, and Municipal Partnership

Harvard University is providing the CitySense software design and resource management, BBN is designing the hardware and planning the deployment, and the City of Cambridge is installing the nodes and providing electricity and operational support.

For more information, visit http://www.citysense.net