Wireless Sensors Monitor Glacier Behavior

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a world premiere, an interdisciplinary team of the University of Southampton, GlacsWeb, has deployed a network of wireless sensors inside a Norwegian glacier to record its behavior. This news release, "Sensor Technology Comes in from the Cold" says that the sensor probes, housed in 'electronic pebbles,' are buried 60 meters under the surface of the glacier. And they transmit wirelessly their observations about temperature, pressure or ice movement to a base station located on the surface, which relays the readings to a server in the UK by mobile phone. The researchers think that similar sensor webs will soon be deployed around the world to watch what is changing in our environment. You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."

Comments

Re:Is it just me?

[PatrickThomson]

Ahem! The global warming --> ice age link was about the only good science in it.

radio link

[j1m 5n0w]

I'm surprised they got a radio link to work through 60m of ice. They're apparently using 1.8 ghz radios.

-jim

Re:radio link

[alriddoch]

The presentation you linked is a bit old, and I'm not sure where the 1.8 ghz figure comes from.

I am one of the field researchers on this project, and radio propagation through the ice has been one of the major difficulties. Initial work based on 868MHz has had limited success, so the followup work will use 433MHz with a backup low bandwidth 50kHz link.

Initial tests done last October with 433MHz indicated that we should be able get the range we need. The key is that ice has very different radio properties from water. It is much less conductive. This is countered by the problem that for much of the year there is a lot of water inside and on the gacier.

Re:Is it just me?

[syphax]

For more info, start with this paper by Wallace Broecker. One good quote:

The fact that we are unable to provide satisfactory estimates of the probability that a conveyor shutdown will occur or of its consequences is certainly reason to be extremely prudent with regard to CO2 emissions. The record of events that transpired during the last glacial period sends us the clear warning that by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, we are poking an angry beast (Fig. 5).

Here's another good site.

Piquepaille, Call it what it is: BLOG / SPAM

[Anonymous Coward]

"You'll find more details and pictures in this overview."

Hey Roland, stop being MISLEADING and DISHONEST and say up front that you've taken other people's pictures and links (NOT more details), posted them at your BLOG, and that you want everyone to visit your BLOG so you can make more MONEY from increased traffic and ADVERTISING.

I have never seen anyone so shameless about directing so much traffic to their own blog for financial self-gain. It brings a new definition to the term blog spam

This overview of Roland Piquepaille spam activities is the most insightful that I have ever read. Even Slashdot's moderators agree that it's insightful.

Re:Standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most sensor network research groups are developing their own protocols since TCP/IP and other standard protocols are perceived to be too heavy-weight, and usually do not match the specialized application conditions in the wireless network. For instance, a wireless sensor in most cases do not need a unique identity such as an IP address - it is the sensor data that is important, not the individual sensor devices. There is a very commonly used protocol called "Directed Diffusion" (link) that is used to gather sensor data from a wireless network. This protocol runs directly on top of the physical link layer, without any protocol layers beneath it.

That said, there are people working on bringing the TCP/IP protocols to wireless sensor networks (a project at SICS in Sweden) but it hasn't reached wide-spread usage yet.

Roland==Spammer

[Anonymous Coward]

Poster is a slashdot spammer.

Re:Carrier

[alriddoch]

There is very good mobile phone coverage on the glacier, as there are antennas on the roof of a hotel in the valley below. This combined with excellent accessibility are the reasons this glacier was chosen for the study.

The hardware has to be very carefully designed to get the batteries to last. We believe that we can get up to a year worth of operation from a probe. I don't have the details of the batteries to hand, but this is the aproximate time period, taking into account the reduced performance due to the cold.

Re:How are these pebbles powered?

[alriddoch]

The glacsweb probes contain about 4 small batteries. They contain a realtime clock, and are in a minimal power sleep mode for most of the time. They wake up once a day to talk to the base station on the surface. The probes are designed to last for a year, and the first batch were deployed in August 2003.

Re:Is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your post is theoretically a bad troll from the start. In case it's not, bear in mind Mt. Pinatubo did nothing of the sort. It *did* eject about as much sulfur dioxide as the human race does in a decade. Sulfur dioxide causes acid rain and exacerbates ozone depletion. It is *not* a greenhouse gas. Also bear in mind Pinatubo was a single event, with very different effect than humans' gradual pressure. Human behavior modifies climate all over the place, from urban heat islands to irrigation humidifying to desertification.

Global warming denial is a symptom of people's memories being limited by their lifespan.