SenseNet: MIT Distributed Sensor Network

 

MIT Facilities is building a campus-wide ambient sensing system by deploying battery-operated sensors to monitor the environment of buildings on campus. Facilities is interested in four main goals of such a system: archiving sensor readings for future analysis, fairly prompt alerting of anomalous conditions, user reports of issues, and user retrieval of archived information. Users include students, faculty, and staff.

 

This report outlines our implementation of SenseNet, a system which meets those four goals. The system has three main components to do this: the sensor nodes, the Facilities Central Server (FCS), and mobile devices. As mentioned above the sensor nodes record readings about the environment where they are deployed. The FCS is where the sensor readings will be archived and via which we manage the sensors. Mobile devices belonging to users have an app that lets the devices function as mobile gateways between the sensors and the FCS, and are the entry point for users to interact with the system. The sensors communicate with the FCS via mobile devices as shown:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1: The three main components in this ambient sensing system. This shows flow from sensor to the FCS via mobile device. The communication flow can go in the opposite direction, from the FCS to sensor via mobile device. (Reproduced from the 6.033 Spring 15 design project information packet.)

 

In this report, we present the details of how each of these components is specified to work, how they interact with each other, the design considerations that drove these decisions, and an evaluation of how SenseNet successfully meets Facilities’ goals.