WiFi Extension for Drought Early-Warning Detection System Components

Abstract: Excessive droughts on the African continent have caused the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute to launch a program of gathering data in hopes of producing models for rainfalls and droughts. A sensor capable of gathering such data has already been chosen, however there remains the problem of conveniently retrieving data from each of the sensors spread over a large area of land. To accomplish this goal, a small, cheap and efficient wireless capable module would need to be used. A possible candidate is the new WiFi-module from Espress if designated ESP8266. It is an extremely cheap and versatile wireless SoC that is able to perform the task of a wireless communications adapter for the sensor unit. The point of this thesis is to investigate the suitability of IEEE 802.11 for the task, and produce a piece of firmware for the ESP8266. The firmware shall enable it to be attached to a sensor and operate as a wireless mesh node in a self-organizing WLAN sensor network, enabling data retrieval via WiFi multi-hop deliveries.