A robust wide-area wireless sensor network for GNSS monitoring of flowing glaciers

This paper presents a robust wide-area wireless sensor network for GNSS monitoring of fast flowing tidewater glaciers, in particular the Helheim glacier in Greenland which is approximately 15km in length and 5-7km wide. The proposed network comprises of a cluster of up to 25 GNSS-nodes sending positional information to a basestation via a 2.4GHz Zigbee link to form a robust wireless-sensor-network. In order to monitor calving events - when large potions of the glacier face fall into the sea, a region 6km long and 3km wide close to the calving front will be monitored. This paper presents antenna designs required for the Zigbee interface to the GNSS-nodes and the base station which will be used to collect the data, in addition to a sensor network model and performance analysis of a single and multi-hop channel to improve the average channel quality, by providing macro-level spatial diversity. Due to the lack of channel modeling in this unique environment, this paper employs a dense-urban propagation model to analyze the viability of a sensor network design.