Space-Ground Sensor Web for Study of Urban Micro-Environment

The paper presents our initial research results on space-ground wireless sensor web with its application in the urban micro-temperature spatial distribution and its relation to population density and land coverage percentage. NASA MODIS onboard the Terra satellite is taken as one note in this web, and the ground segment consists of in situ networked sensor nodes, which in fact are an integration of Mica weather board. All in situ sensor nodes (motes) are networked and communicated through wireless network to collect the micro-temperature and meteorological data. When the MODIS satellite passes by the study area, the networked in situ sensor nodes are informed to turn on for data collection, and then transmit their readings to the base station at ODU through wireless communication. Due to data redundancy in this sensor web, we first developed the algorithm for data mosaic reduction, then interpolate the urban temperature through point data collected by the sensor web and MODIS temperature data, and finally analyzed the relationship between urban temperature and population density and land use percentage.