Integrating mobile swarms with large-scale sensor networks using satellites

Sensor networking technologies have developed very rapidly in the last ten years. However, due to the limited capability (e.g., low quality camera, limited wireless channel bandwidth, limited battery life etc.) of the sensor nodes, it is very difficult to support multimedia streams in current sensor networks. To solve the problem, we propose to enhance the ground sensor network by deploying several mobile "swarms". The swarm nodes have much higher capabilities than the sensor nodes in terms of both hardware functionalities and networking throughput. The mobile swarms can fly to the "hot spots" in the sensor network to collect detailed information about the targeted area. However, the mobile swarms are usually far apart from each other, and from the control centers. Using satellites is then the best way to connect the mobile swarms among themselves and to the command centers. We examine such kinds of sensor networks with the enhancement of mobile swarms and satellites and evaluate their performance via simulations. With the help of a satellite, we can effectively integrate mobile swarms with large scale sensor network to support high quality multimedia streams.