Real-Time Virtual Instruments for Remote Sensor Monitoring Using Low Bandwidth Wireless Networks

• Main Authors: Biruk Gebre, Liwen Guo, Nishit Patel, Kishore Pochiraju
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Institute of Informatics and Cybernetics 2008-06-01
• Series: Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
• Subjects: Data Acquisition; Sample Rate; throughput; Network Bandwidth; Resolution; Transmission Control Protocol (TCP); Latency
• Online Access: http://www.iiisci.org/Journal/CV$/sci/pdfs/T832JVB.pdf

The development of a peer-to-peer virtual instrumentation system for remote acquisition, analysis and transmission of data on low bandwidth networks is described. The objective of this system is to collect high frequency/high bandwidth data from multiple sensors placed at remote locations and adaptively adjust the resolution of this data so that it can be transmitted on bandwidth limited networks to a central monitoring and command center. This is achieved by adaptively re-sampling (decimating) the data from the sensors at the remote location before transmission. The decimation is adjusted to the available bandwidth of the communications network which is characterized in real-time. As a result, the system allows users at the remote command center to view high bandwidth data (at a lower resolution) with user-aware and minimized latency. This technique is applied to an eight hydrophone data acquisition system that requires a 25.6 Mbps connection for the transmission of the full data set using a wireless connection with 1 – 3.5 Mbps variable bandwidth. This technique can be used for applications that require monitoring of high bandwidth data from remote sensors in research and education fields such as remote scientific instruments and visually driven control applications.