Center for Embedded Network Sensing

To facilitate the study of the wireless sensor network for demanding acoustic monitoring of long distance sources, we recently have also started working on the development of a new generation of wireless acoustic sensor network platform using the Stargate nodes. The 400 MHz PXA-255 XScale processor and the 64 MB SDRAM provide the Stargate platform a decent processing capability. The VX Pocket 440 sound card with four external microphones are attached to each Stargate node through the PCMCIA slot for acoustic data acquisition. We use highly-sensitive external microphones with low self-noise. The VXPocket 440 sound card supports data sampling up to 48 KHz in 24 bits. Each Stargate node also has a flash interface to connect a 802.11 card for wireless communication. The Stargate-based platform is for the acoustic monitoring of woodpeckers in the James Reserve and the like.