Design and Implementation of A Hardware Platform For Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of a network of wireless nodes that have the capability to sense a parameter of interest like temperature, humidity, vibration etc that is often relayed to a base station through the network formed amongst these nodes. The devices used are typically characterized by low cost, low power and are rugged in operation and are commonly referred to as motes in the WSN domain. These motes are not readily and easily available in Pakistan. They have to be imported and not all educational institutions in the country have administrative procedures in place that enable them to procure these devices easily. It is therefore important that such devices are easily and readily available to the educational and research communities. Our objective was to design and implement a mote that integrates programming, computation, communication, and sensing onto a single system and provides an easy user interface for operating and deploying it. This has been carried out by designing and implementing the hardware and integrating it with the operating system. The designed mote has been compared with the reference design (TelosB). The result of the project is a hardware platform that can be deployed in innumerable applications in the field of wireless sensor networks.