Monitoring pavement condition using Smart Dust under surge time synchronization

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of the authors' previous effort (presented at SPIE 2006) of developing a "Smart Dust" (Mica2 Motes)-based wireless sensor network to detect hazardous roadway surface conditions. New developments reported herein focus on a series of investigations into the performance of "Smart Dust" wireless network. A series of pseudo-outdoor and road tests are conducted in this study. The network is fairly small with a large transmitting range between each Mote, compared with the published work on applying the same product. <i>Surge Time Synchronization</i> is explored in the specific application to allow each Mote to "wake up" periodically at a predefined time interval. In addition, a fairly simplistic pattern classification algorithm is embedded into the Motes to create the smart wireless sensing application. Many performance metrics of the adopted "Smart Dust" wireless sensor network with a small size and large transmitting range are revealed in this study through a series of data processing efforts. Results are presented to examine (1) network connectivity, (2) packet delivery performance, (3) initial connection time, (4) error rate, (5) battery life, and (6) other network routing properties such as the parent time histories for each Mote. These results and analysis form a database for future efforts to better understand the performance of and the collected results from "Smart Dust".