Sensor Mapping Platform Based on Cellular Phone Networks

Currently, we live in the Age of Information: nothing is worth more to companies than information. Companies such as Google and Facebook have made billions by gathering data from the internet. An example of such is Google's AdSense which infers the reader's interests by matching the content of the currently viewed web pages to relevant advertisement. [15] By focusing on key words of a web site, an email, or any other web document, Google is able to show the user banner advertisement which directly correlates to what he or she is interested in. Along the same lines, Facebook profits off of the information of its users by creating " a new advertising system that would let marketers target users with ads based on the massive amounts of information people reveal on the site about themselves.. . " [1]. i.e. When users enter in information, e.g. favorite books, current music, current events, Facebook takes it, and uses it as a survey. Companies who are interested can pay to see what users are currently interested in. Both of these companies focus on information about online user data, but neither can gather useful data while the user is offline. If there is a way to analyze sensor data collected from users during their every day lives, the information could be valuable in many ways. One possible way would be to directly send the user advertisement based on his or her current conditions, e.g. sending information to the user about a nice, refreshing bottle of soda if the temperature in his or her proximity is uncomfortably high. Another opportunity for valuable data would be a better understanding of different areas, allowing for a better management of such areas; e.g. city officials could improve upon air quality more successfully by specific area if sensors were able map out pollution data. 3 There are many reasons why cellular phones would be excellent solutions for such an application. First, cellular phones are already widely used. A research firm called Informa did a recent study on the number of mobile phones worldwide and found " Worldwide mobile telephone subscriptions reached 3.3 billion-equivalent to half the global population " [3]. Thus, cellular phones provide an already available platform in order to build up a large data collection network. Secondly, there is the benefit of this network being wirelessly connected. This reduces the costs of creating more infrastructure, as well …