Sensors can produce valuable data about groundwater, soil emissions, tremors, snowpack temperatures, cloud formation, and many other Earth system features. The sensors are generally quite cheap, but retrieving their data is a challenge, especially from remote locations.
Across the United States, many research projects are situated at mountain meadows, desert valleys, and other locations with poor or no commercial cellular service. Therefore, scientists have hitherto been dependent on improvised methods for data collection.
Quite a few still rely on a “sneaker net” – visiting their devices regularly to swap out memory sticks or hard drives. This could soon become history. A U.S. government organization focused on scientific networking, the Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), with 15,000 miles of dedicated fiber-optic cable has expanded to the “wireless edge,” offering a portable private cellular unit that will dramatically simplify connectivity for remote sensor sites.
“Can you hear me now?”
ESnet’s team of networking experts and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory field scientists first developed a prototype for an affordable, flexible solar-powered system, called the Greenfield Wireless Edge Site Characterization system, that can identify the optimal wireless connectivity solutions for field research sites. The unit is 4 meters tall, weighs approximately 200 pounds, and is designed to be broken down and transported in several manageable cases.
ESnet has used the Greenfield Wireless prototype to assess wireless connectivity needs at several challenging field sites. At a Department of Energy AmeriFlux site in California’s Sacramento Delta, sensors monitor emissions from anaerobic soil bacteria in a corn field. At a Fervo Energy geothermal site near Milford, Utah — where DOE-funded researchers collect seismic data across multiple largely solar-powered pads — the team determined that Wi-Fi HaLow and/or directional radio links were the most reliable and cost-efficient option. At the Ormat Geothermal Plant in Jersey Valley, Nevada, where sensors will collect 10 gigabytes of seismic data per day across topographically challenging, fog-prone terrain, the team concluded that a private cellular system combining Wi-Fi HaLow and point-to-multipoint radio links would best serve the site’s needs.
Free the data
ESnet doesn’t just advise the field scientists on what will work, however; the Wireless Edge team will also install private cellular solutions using a new kit they’ve dubbed “ESnet-To-Go.” The solar- and battery-powered private-cellular system offers 5G data mobility along with various networking features, and can be connected to the public cellular network or Starlink for data backhaul to the ESnet backbone.
For Berkeley Lab Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) geophysicists using distributed acoustic seismic sensors to study how carbon is stored underground, ESnet deployed an “ESnet-To-Go” kit capable of supporting up to five Starlink units for scalable uplink/downlink speeds. They installed and linked a directional Wi-Fi radio dish (supplied by the scientists) to bring data from the distributed acoustic systems installed in two wells about 1 mile away back to the “site office” (a shipping container) for analysis and transmission. To test the system, a “thumper” truck sent ground vibrations through the earth — and the data streamed back instantly. This effort allowed the science program to complete field-data collection on time by increasing their site connectivity by a factor of 8. By enabling real-time analysis in the field, researchers can adjust experiments on the spot, react faster to fleeting events, and thus accelerate the pace of their discovery.
And in collaboration with researchers with the University of Nevada, ESnet deployed a 5GSA Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) access point outside Reno, supporting testing of private 5G to control unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) operations at remote sites.
Greatly reducing cost/time
The researchers have returned to the Ormat geothermal site in Nevada, which is also a research site for Berkeley Lab’s Geothermal Systems Program, supporting a set of seismic sensors across 12 distributed sites across several square miles. The new wireless LAN allows direct measurement and remote management of seismic systems, some of which were occluded due to terrain and other restrictions, greatly reducing cost/time spent collecting data manually.
“We’re focused both on reducing the costs and uncertainty associated with sensor deployments, and on making it easier for researchers to retrieve these important data and keep them available to the DOE (Department of Energy, ed.) ecosystem,” says Andrew Wiedlea, ESnet Science Engagement Acting Group lead and Wireless Edge project lead. “For ESnet, it’s about extending our expertise in fiber-optic networking hardware — and in co-designing custom networking solutions for DOE-funded scientists — to create a set of mobile wireless resources that we can easily deploy to field sites or utilize at the national labs.”
The text is inspired by the article “Can you read me now? New Private Cellular Tower Prototype Helps Field Researchers Connect Remote Sensors” by Bonnie Powell at the ESnet website. To learn more, email en****@**.net.
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