Integration of low computational power nodes in a GRID measurement architecture

The increasing diffusion of environmental monitoring systems demands for more flexibility in the management of the whole system and in a lower cost for the arrangement of each measuring unit. Both these requirements can be met by arranging the whole system as a GRID architecture and employing units that are based on low-cost micro-controllers or palm PCs. However, such kind of units does not exhibit enough processing capabilities to met the full GRID requirements. For this reason, the authors propose a proxy-based approach that allows low-cost measuring units to be integrated into a GRID architecture, by introducing the concept of virtual measurement GRID node. Such a node is mainly composed of a measurement front-end that communicates with a proxy GRID node, which exhibits the full GRID services. An example of virtual measurement node is proposed that is conceived for pollution monitoring and a prototype of measurement node is described that senses temperature and concentration of carbon monoxide.