After motes and multihop: Mobile phones and the global mobile sensor network

Abstract

Technological advances in sensing, computation, storage, and communications will turn the ubiquitous mobile phone into a global mobile sensing device carried by billions of people world-wide. Sensing will be people- centric, enabling a different way to sense, learn, visualize, and share information about ourselves, friends, communities, the way we live, and the world we live in. People-centric sensing juxtaposes the traditional view of small-scale, mote-based sensor networks with one in which people, carrying sensor-enabled mobile phones, enable opportunistic sensing coverage - ultimately, leading to the dawn of a global mobile sensor network. In the MetroSense Project's vision of people-centric sensing, users are the key architectural system component, enabling a host of new application areas such as personal, public, and social sensing.