This paper explores the network performance and costs associated with the deployment, labor, and maintenance of a long-term outdoor multi-hop wireless sensor network (WSN) located at the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania (ASWP), which has been in operation for more than four years for environmental data collection. The WSN performance is studied over selected time periods during the network deployment time, based on two different TinyOS-based WSN routing protocols: commercial XMesh and the open-source Collection Tree Protocol (CTP). Empirical results show that the network performance is improved with CTP (i.e., 79% packet reception rate, 96% packet success rate and 0.2% duplicate packets), versus using XMesh (i.e., 36% packet reception rate and 46%
In this paper, the ASWP testbed, a long-term wireless sensor network (WSN) deployment for environmental monitoring, is presented. This testbed implements a periodic sampling application for external sensors exposed to a forested outdoor environment in western Pennsylvania, USA. It has been running for the past two years using TinyOS-based WSN platforms and the commercially available routing software XMesh. ASWP's performance is analyzed in detail for the period of August 2011 to August 2012, focusing on packet duplication, packet loss, and network maintenance. The results indicate that the critical impact due to the outdoor environment and node physical failures significantly reduced the network yield when long-term periods were considered. In particular, it is found that an over-used routing path across the network was responsible for most of the packet retransmissions and drops in ASWP. This work intends to provide a reference point for WSN research and development targeted towards outdoor WSNs for long-term deployments.
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being used in a variety of applications including environmental monitoring, event detection, object tracking, and healthcare applications. Network management of WSNs is one of the key practical challenges that arise from the increasing number of applications and technologies deployed. This work presents a web-based integrated network and data management system that is aimed at:(1) systematically supporting heterogeneous WSNs with a unified management system; (2) presenting a clear separation between WSN management and application functions; and (3) offering management functionalities with a clear user interface. In this paper we present the design and implementation of this WSN management system and report its deployment in a real-world WSN testbed for environmental monitoring.
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