BusNet is a sensor network initially designed to monitor environmental pollution using sensor mounted on public transport buses. We have extended the functionality of the BusNet to monitor road surface conditions in addition to collecting data on environmental pollution.
The design of the BusNet is based on the observation that it requires a large number of sensors spread over a large geographical area to collect useful data on environmental pollution. However, such a large number of sensors poses several problems.
- It is expensive to build a monitoring system with large number of sensors.
- It is difficult to maintain such a system. Imagine locating the sensors just to replace the batteries !!
- It is difficult to provide security to a large number of sensors spread over a large area.
We noted that if we mounted sensors on public transport buses we can solve all the problems mentioned above and the BusNet is the result of this observation.
In BusNet the sensors mounted on buses collect data and they are capable of collecting data covering a large geographical area. Buses collect data when they are on the move and when they arrive at regional bus stations they transfer data over a wireless link to a collection points located in these regional bus stations. We call these collection points Sub Stations.
