Over the air programming method for learning wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are small or tiny devices that consists of different sensors to sense physical parameters like air pressure, temperature, vibrations, movement etc., process these data and sends it to the central data center to take decisions. The WSN domain, has wide range of applications such as monitoring and detecting natural hazards like landslides, forest fire, avalanche, flood monitoring and also in healthcare applications. With such different applications, it is being taught in undergraduate/post graduate level in many universities under department of computer science. But the cost and infrastructure required to setup the WSN Lab for having the students getting hands on expertise on these devices is expensive. This paper gives overview about the Remote triggered lab that consists of more than 80 WSN nodes connected with various sensors, digital multimeters etc., that helps the students to remotely login from anywhere in the world using the World Wide Web, configure the nodes and learn the WSN concepts in intuitive way. The paper also proposes the application of over the air programming method to the remote triggered lab and the implemented protocol handshakes between processor and flash chip to store multiple images in micaz hardware. This helps to remotely program the nodes simultaneously and view the results with real time video streaming, without the nodes being physical connected to the computer system and thereby allowing for sparse deployment.