CarTel: a distributed mobile sensor computing system

ABSTRACT

CarTel is a mobile sensor computing system designed to collect, process, deliver, and visualize data from sensors located on mobile units such as automobiles. A CarTel node is a mobile embedded computer coupled to a set of sensors. Each node gathers and processes sensor readings locally before delivering them to a central portal, where the data is stored in a database for further analysis and visualization. In the automotive context, a variety of on-board and external sensors collect data as users drive.CarTel provides a simple query-oriented programming interface, handles large amounts of heterogeneous data from sensors, and handles intermittent and variable network connectivity. CarTel nodes rely primarily on opportunistic wireless (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) connectivity to the Internet, or to "data mules" such as other CarTel nodes, mobile phone flash memories, or USB keys-to communicate with the portal. CarTel applications run on the portal, using a delay-tolerant continuous query processor, ICEDB, to specify how the mobile nodes should summarize, filter, and dynamically prioritize data. The portal and the mobile nodes use a delay-tolerant network stack, CafNet, to communicat.CarTel has been deployed on six cars, running on a small scale in Boston and Seattle for over a year. It has been used to analyze commute times, analyze metropolitan Wi-Fi deployments, and for automotive diagnostics.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Distributed applications

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
data management, data visualization, implementation, intermittent connectivity, mobility, query processing, sensor networks