Collaborative Research: CCRI: New: Distributed Sensing & Computing Over Sparse Environments (DISCOVER) Platform

DISCOVER (Distributed Sensing and Computing Over Sparse Environments) is a cyberinfrastructure testbed for remote, rural, and sparsely populated areas, consisting of a fabric of highly configurable and fixed and mobile Internet-of-Things (IoT) nodes and a heterogeneous wireless network. The project is a collaborative effort among two minority and undergraduate serving institutions: Northern Arizona University (NAU) and Navajo Technical University (NTU), the largest tribal college in the country located in Navajo land in New Mexico. DISCOVER sites will be located at the NAU and NTU campuses as well as several remote sites.

DISCOVER will enable focused research on new breeds of algorithms that address a range of challenges around prioritization and optimization of computation and communication in remote, less populous and rural areas. The proposed infrastructure will advance the frontier of science in different fields of the CISE community by enabling remote experimentation for innovative research including the development and evaluation of: (1) methodologies for collecting and analyzing regional-scale, sparse, temporal-spatial data, (2) heterogeneous networked services, (3) distributed computing and AI, control, decision making, in-network computation and information extraction algorithms for complex CPS, (4) communication-aware software for remote sensing and actuation in heterogeneous and resource-limited networks.

The primary goal of DISCOVER is to provide a research platform for investigation of distributed computing, networking, security, control and coordination solutions in a heterogeneous configurable cyber-physical system infrastructure that will provide critical services for areas and populations at increasing risk of being underserved. The education and outreach impacts of this project include training and research opportunities for undergraduate students, engaging underrepresented minority students from American Indian and Alaska Native populations---in particular the Navajo and Tohono O'odham nations---at NAU, NTU and other local tribal colleges and undergraduate universities, and developing hands-on research experiments for K-12 students.

A project website will be created to post the material, updates, collected data, and sample scripts. The website will be maintained by the PI and will be accessible via https://www.cefns.nau.edu/~fa334/

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.