Ohio State researchers are working on a wireless sensor system that might soon help bolster national security.The sensor system, which in essence is a series of tripwires that has no wires, is aimed at protecting assets that are in remote, outdoor locations.

Dr. Anish Arora, professor of computer science and engineering, said the system his group is working on could be used to protect areas such as roads, pipelines or national borders. He said the need for such a system comes directly from homeland and national security requirements.

“For instance, you might want to protect the border between Syria and Iraq, the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan or pipelines in Iraq,” Arora said. “You could protect a road to see if anyone has planted an I.E.D., an improvised explosive device.”

The system works by interlinking an array of cigarette-box-sized devices with a remote laptop computer that serves as the command post. Each device is equipped with sensors that can detect sound, metallic objects or human intruders. The sensors working together in an integrated wireless network can detect and track anything that moves within their range and transmit that location back to the laptop.

Arora said the sensor devices, which were originally developed at the University of California, Berkeley, have been modified and made more capable by OSU researchers. The current system includes two different types of sensor devices: the XSM and the newer, more powerful Stargate.

OSU is working primarily with the problems of deployment, management and control of a large-scale network of these sensors. In order to study these problems, OSU is leading a new project called ExScale, which stands for extreme scale. This project will require researchers to successfully integrate and control 10,000 sensor units spread over an area that measures 10 kilometers long by half a kilometer wide.

The final full-scale test will take place in Florida on Eglan Island. Before the team heads down to Florida the members will do scaled down preliminary testing in various locations, including a leased warehouse in Columbus that will serve as a large indoor test-bed. The test-bed is capable of testing a network composed of 4,500 sensor devices.

“When you do this type of experimentation in the field, it is very laborious and very time-consuming, especially for the students who have worked hard,” Arora said. “We need a way to do these experiments more efficiently, that’s why we built this large scale test-bed.”

Arora hopes the test-bed will be useful to other research teams on campus that are also working with large-scale sensor networks for other purposes. Sandip Bapat, a graduate student in computer science and engineering, said these advanced sensor networks can have many other uses beyond their military applications. He said the network software could adapt to other applications by changing the type of sensor used in the field.

“Sensors deployed in a large field could tell the farmer exactly how much water and fertilizer each part of the field is getting,” Bapat said. “Such information can help the farmer save resources by telling him exactly how much water and chemicals need to be applied to the field.”

Vinod Krishnan, a graduate student in computer science and engineering, said a lot of work still needs to be done before the devices are ready for deployment. Researchers are still working with many problems including synchronization of time and localization.

“In order for the network to function properly, each device must be synchronized to the same exact time and each sensor must know its exact location in relation to the other sensors, ” Krishnan said. “If many devices are detecting the same target, they need to have synchronized clocks so that the information they are transmitting to the laptop can be interpreted correctly.”

Despite the many challenges, Ohio State researchers expect to have the full-scale test ready to go by the end of the year. They said they are working hard to achieve that goal and are excited to have an opportunity to work with such groundbreaking technology.

“It’s definitely very exciting,” Babpat said. “We are working with cutting edge technology and running into challenges and issues that no one has ever faced before.”