Realization of zigbee wireless sensor networks for temperature and humidity monitoring

Abstract

Many physical phenomena and processes in the environment must be monitored. This problem can be solved with an ad-hoc wireless sensor network (WSN), which consists of a number of small and self-power sensing devices (nodes) that are connected with each other using effective wireless networks. This paper reports development of an embedded wireless sensor network (WSN) prototype for environmental parameters monitoring. The network itself consists of a coordinator or data gateway which wirelessly collect temperature and humidity data over several sensor nodes. Each sensor node is developed from an arduino based microcontroller, Xbee wireless module based on Zigbee/IEEE 802.15.4 standards, and temperature and humidity sensor devices. In the prototype system, both temperature and humidity sensors are calibrated with accurate instruments to obtain precise measurements. Its communication functionality is also tested in various network topologies. The battery lifetime is calculated to predict the energy consumption. The testing results show that the system works well in terms of its functionality.