Electrosense: Open and Big Spectrum Data

TL;DR

Electrosense is a collaborative, open-access spectrum monitoring system that uses low-cost sensors and big data architecture to improve understanding and utilization of the electromagnetic spectrum for various applications.

Contribution

It introduces a large-scale, open, and collaborative spectrum data collection and sharing platform using low-cost sensors and big data processing.

Findings

Large-scale spectrum data collected and shared openly

Enables diverse applications like cognitive radios and law enforcement

Demonstrates effective spectrum utilization monitoring

Abstract

While the radio spectrum allocation is well regulated, there is little knowledge about its actual utilization over time and space. This limitation hinders taking effective actions in various applications including cognitive radios, electrosmog monitoring, and law enforcement. We introduce Electrosense, an initiative that seeks a more efficient, safe and reliable monitoring of the electromagnetic space by improving the accessibility of spectrum data for the general public. A collaborative spectrum monitoring network is designed that monitors the spectrum at large scale with low-cost spectrum sensing nodes. The large set of data is stored and processed in a big data architecture and provided back to the community with an open spectrum data as a service model, that allows users to build diverse and novel applications with different requirements. We illustrate useful usage scenarios of the Electrosense data.