Design, Development and Testing of Wireless Sensor Network Mote

Abstract

Wireless Sensor network applications range from simple data gathering to hard to imagine fields like Internet of Things. For all the applications the physical design space consist of sensors extended with storage, power supply, computation and communication capabilities, the so-called motes. These motes run the network protocol programs that most of the time sleep, and occasionally collect, process, store and communicate. Unfortunately number of protocol proposals has increased but number of mote studies has not. This dissertation begins with different generic motes since 1990 to 2013 for WSN. The motes are selected based on a number of criteria including popularity, published results and interesting characteristics and features. The motes are analyzed using a number of different parameters and criteria, including processor used, lifetime, cost, software support, size and their strengths and weaknesses. Simulation of LEACH protocol using the motes is carried out and a comparative analysis of the network lifetime is presented. The results of the simulation will help application developers to select appropriate mote for their network. Results are further used to develop a custom built sensor mote platform.

The mote designed and developed is energy efficient, compact in size, robust and cheap in cost. The power and energy efficiency is achieved by using ultra-low power MSP430 controller which has six power saving modes with different facilities, chipcon’s low power CC2500 radio board and lowest power on board humidity sensor HTU21D. The Surface Mount Device and Quad Flat No-lead packages with an optimize routing compact the overall size of mote design. The mote operates at low supply voltage of 3 volts using 2 AAA batteries. It can handle -40 to +105 degree temperature so it is more robust in nature. The designed mote is cheap compared to the other available motes in the market based on the BOM generation of a mote. Mote is tested using LEFT, EEFF and DMAC protocols. The lifetime, scalability and reliability performance of all the protocols is tested. The results reveal that the developed mote can be used in a generic system which can be easily integrated into existing commercial systems.