| This thesis presents a system architecture for the U.S. Department of Transportation Intelligent Transportation System Mobile Observation research initiative whose purpose is to determine how localized, real-time winter weather, road condition, and vehicle-related data gathered by mobile, vehicle-based systems can be used to more effectively maintain roads, reduce operating costs through more efficient road maintenance, and improve responsiveness and accuracy of safety systems such as road condition warning systems and chain controls mounted on dynamic signs over major highways. The system architecture has been demonstrated to effectively collect heterogeneous data that arrives asynchronously from measurement instruments, validate the data, log it to on-board storage, select a subset of the collected data and relay it via the statewide Enhanced Digital Access Communications System bandwidth-limited radio network to a central server for analysis by data customers including the Federal Highway Administration and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The architecture is fault-tolerant, facilitates remote debugging via its debug logs, and its operation is highly user-configurable. |
