Title:  Wireless Systems for Energy-Efficient and High-Rate Acquisition in Dense Seismic Survey Topologies

Committee: 

Dr. Stuber, Advisor

Dr. Barry, Chair

Dr. Blough

Abstract:

The objective of the proposed research is to design a wireless geophone network architecture that can acquire seismic data in a scalable, energy-efficient, and real-time manner. Unlike typical sensor networks, data generation rates at each of the geophones are relatively high (0.1-1 Mbps), implying an aggregate rate of several Gigabits per second at the sink node for a total of 10,000-30,000 geophones that are deployed across areas as large as 100 square kilometers. A hierarchical architecture is proposed, with the IEEE 802.11af standard being deployed at the bottommost layer of the architecture. By operating in sub-GHz television white spaces, data rates of up to 70 Mbps over distances of up to 1 km can be realized. Additional channel access schemes, based on smart polling and time division multiple access techniques, are designed to deliver contention-free access and improved power saving at the geophones. A self-organizing network based on the IEEE 802.11ad standard is also an alternative choice for deployment at this layer. At the upper layers of the architecture, a mesh network based on IEEE 802.11ad and free space optical communication, can be employed to sustain real-time acquisition at Gigabit rates. Effective power conservation can be enforced at this stage by formulating an optimization framework that yields optimal aggregation lengths and sleep durations for frame aggregation-based operation. Overall, the task of securing real-time seismic acquisition at the sink node can be performed in an energy-efficient and standards-compliant manner, with the use of a minimal number of gateway devices.