SBIR-STTR Award

While termites inflict almost $4 Billion dollars in damage per year in the United States, termite control still depends upon labor intensive and expensive manual monitoring techniques. This project will determine the feasibility of deploying acoustic sensor arrays that will alert a Pest Management Professional (PMP) of termite activity. OBJECTIVES: This project will determine the feasibility of a low cost wireless termite monitoring system that, once deployed, requires minimal system maintenance while retaining a high probability of detection. Specific objectives include: 1) Building a small wireless network of the scale that would be required for protecting a structure and using this network to determine the power, bandwidth, and cost requirements necessary for acoustic monitoring. 2)Determining the best sensing method for the acoustic detection of termites and developing a prototype sensor. 3) Developing a software recognition strategy for reliably detecting termite acoustic activity at the sensor. 4) Predicting the overall effectiveness of a wireless termite monitoring system, and estimating the cost and timesavings to a PMP on a yearly basis. APPROACH: Wireless acoustic termite monitoring involves work in three distinct areas. First, the sensor net must allow reliable communication while having a minimal cost and power footprint. We will be experimenting with multi-hop protocols in which data packets are passed in a bucket brigade style, allowing stations to self arrange into networks. The advantages are lower power consumption and tolerance to hardware failures. The next efforts are in sensor design and signal processing. These are closely coupled as better processing routines may allow less expensive and lower sensitivity sensors. Signal processing will concentrate upon optimizing combinations of multiple signal detection techniques and generating outputs tailored for indicating termite presence. The small power footprint of the network limits processing routines while sensor design is constrained by cost requirements and the need for ruggedness

Structural damage from termite infestation causes over $2 Billion in damage yearly within the U.S. In addition, current treatment methods are labor intensive and provide little feedback as to effectiveness. This effort will develop a prototype system for remote monitoring and detection of termites. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this project is the development of a remote termite detection and monitoring system that may be deployed about a structure. A prototype system will be build and evaluated for long-term detection reliability and cost effectiveness. APPROACH: Arrays of sensor nodes will be buried about a structure. Termite activity will be detected using a variety of sensing methods, and data will be forwarded to a central server, which will then process the data and provide an indication of the level of termite activity.