Award Abstract #0121141
ITR/SI+AP: Active Sensor Networks with Applications in Marine Microorganism Monitoring

NSF Org:	CCF Division of Computer and Communication Foundations
Initial Amendment Date:	September 26, 2001
Latest Amendment Date:	July 17, 2003
Award Number:	0121141
Award Instrument:	Continuing grant
Program Manager:	Mitra Basu CCF Division of Computer and Communication Foundations CSE Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering
Start Date:	September 15, 2001
Expires:	August 31, 2005 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$1587861
Investigator(s):	Aristides A. Requicha requicha@lipari.usc.edu (Principal Investigator) David Caron (Co-Principal Investigator) Deborah Estrin (Co-Principal Investigator) Maja Mataric (Co-Principal Investigator) Gaurav Sukhatme (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of Southern California University Park Los Angeles, CA 90089 213/740-7762
NSF Program(s):	ITR MEDIUM (GROUP) GRANTS, HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT
Field Application(s):	0000099 Other Applications NEC
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, HPCC, 9218, 7218, 1655, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	1687, 1360

ABSTRACT

EIA-0121141

Requicha, Aristides

University of Southern California

ITR/SI+AP: Active Sensor Networks with Applications in Marine Microorganism Monitoring

The proposed research combines networking, distributed robotics, nanorobotics, and microbiology in an effort to develop and apply technology for the in-situ, real-time monitoring of microbial populations in aquatic environments, such as the ocean or water supply systems. The application context provides feedback from experiments with realistic systems, and this feedback is essential to the progress of the Information Technology (IT) research proposed here. This project addresses two key challenges for IT during this decade: moving from virtual to physical applications, and moving from macro to micro and nano.

The IT focus is on the study of Physically-Coupled Scalable Information Infrastructures (PCSIIs), which effectively "embed the internet". The sensors and actuators in the proposed PCSII must have small physical dimensions, comparable to those of the microorganisms to be monitored. They must be deployed in very large numbers to achieve the unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution necessary to investigate the causal relationships between environmental conditions and microorganisms. Control and coordination of a multitude of such devices of limited and heterogeneous capabilities raise major challenges for networking, distributed coordination and distributed algorithms. Sensing for detection and identification of microorganisms is another challenge, which will be tackled by using nanorobotic Scanning Probe Microscope technology.

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