Patent ID: 8078711

Claim:
A front-end gateway unit for use with a remote ecological environment monitoring system that is equipped with a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), a wireless communication system, and a back-end host server, wherein the WSN includes at least one WSN sensor node producing a set of ecological data by sensing the surrounding ecological environment where the WSN sensor node is installed, and the front-end gateway unit providing a front-end gateway function for the WSN to exchange data with the back-end host server via the wireless communication system; the front-end gateway unit comprising: a sensor network linking module, which is used for linking to the WSN for data exchange with each sensor node in the WSN to receive each set of ecological data acquired by each sensor node; a geographical location detection module detecting the geographical location where the front-end gateway unit is located to thereby generate a set of geographical location data in electronic form; a data transmission module converting a combined collection of data including each set of ecological data from the WSN and the geographical location data from the geographical location detection module into a specific data transmission format based on a wireless communication protocol that is compliant with the wireless communication system; a wireless communication linking module linking to the wireless communication system for transmitting the formatted data from the data transmission module to the wireless communication system; and a sensor network management control module performing a set of management control actions on the WSN in response to a set of management control commands issued by the back-end host server and received via the wireless data communication system, wherein the data transmission format utilized by the data transmission module for transmission of the ecological data is Short Message Service (SMS), and the WSN sensor node is a TinyOS-based sensor node.