CRII: CNS: Toward a Sustainable and Intelligent Air-Ground IoT Framework for Remote Monitoring

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Energy harvesting devices can significantly benefit Internet of Things (IoT) applications for remote areas, such as forests, farmlands, and oceans, where electrical power infrastructures are generally unavailable. However, due to the remoteness and limited power budget, it’s difficult for those energy harvesting-powered IoT devices to deliver critical information to the backbone of the IoT network. Emerging unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), such as quadcopters, offer a reliable, controllable, and flexible way of conducting information ferry in the context of energy harvesting, regardless of the landscapes they may fly over. Nevertheless, the air-ground integration between energy harvesting-powered IoT devices and UAVs faces fundamental challenges. In the air, each UAV's coverage is constrained by limited energy. On the ground, routing among energy harvesting IoT devices is susceptible to power failures caused by intermittent energy shortages. This research seeks to develop a sustainable and intelligent air-ground IoT framework to enable efficient collaboration between UAVs and energy harvesting devices for effective data sensing, processing, and delivery for remote monitoring. This research will lay a foundation for the deployment of energy harvesting IoT devices in remote areas with low cost, enhanced reliability, and energy efficiency. The outcomes of this research will include novel algorithms, protocols, optimizations, and hardware platforms that will significantly benefit cutting-edge IoT applications, such as smart agriculture, wild animal tracking, forestry management, coastal monitoring, and more. The research results will be closely integrated into the education and training of students. This project will promote the participation of underrepresented groups and K-12 students in STEM. All designs will be made publicly available for broad adoption and future research advances. 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.