A flexible approach to WSN development and deployment
A flexible Wireless Sensor Network platform has been developed and deployed at the Institut Superior Tecnico/Technical University of Lisbon (IST-TUL). This test-bed integrates multiple projects into a single network, creating an expandable platform that facilitates future developments. To achieve this flexibility, a dedicated framework was developed, enabling fine-grained parameter control and application programmability through a centralised configuration panel. On top of this platform, four applications have been developed and currently coexist within the network, illustrating the new platform's capabilities. The article discusses the test-bed architecture and deployment challenges, as well as the environmental interaction and vibration monitoring applications. An experimental evaluation of these applications' capacity limits and performance shows that in-network processing must be used with the vibration monitoring application to avoid congestion collapse. Furthermore, a minimum amount of time is needed to complete processing tasks with the Environmental Interaction Application (approximately 200 ms in our test topology).
wsn deployment wireless sensor network test-bed environmental interaction vibration monitoring in-network processing high fidelity sampling performance measurement multihop networks