SoNET: A Delay-Tolerant Geo-Sensor Network for Environmental Monitoring

This paper proposes a delay-tolerant based mobile sensing network for monitoring microclimates in Sonoma county, called SoNET. The network utilizes distributed nodes with heterogeneous sensing capacity to create a rich collection of ecological data about climatic variations in the country. Using ZigBee-based communication protocols, mobile nodes in SoNET can exchange data and ensure data penetration to the weather server. Through experimental measurements, in this paper we demonstrate that SoNET can be an effective alternative to deploying expensive individual climate stations or challenging dense sensor networks. We also evaluate the performance of our proposed protocols for data exchange between mobile nodes.