Development of a generic communication platform for wireless sensor networks

Abstract: The purpose of this theses work has been to develop a physical layer wireless network emulator using commercially available hardware. As there are no custom built hardware components a number of compromises have to be made, and solutions to minimize impact on emulator performance have been found. The emulator is designed to handle real-time, two-way communication with up to 8 sensor nodes and is tested to be working using IEEE 802.15.4 compliant wireless sensor nodes. Emulator performance is evaluated, and some avenues to circumventing the emulator shortcomings are presented. Channel reconstruction, using pre-recorded data together with the emulator is also explored. Sensor node transceiver performance is investigated, as well as the possible impact on emulation correctness when connected nodes are non ideal. In the appendix some commonly used techniques for programming field programmable gate arrays are illustrated by an example.