Reconfigurable Sensor Networks
This is a honours project page for Chris Elliott at Monash University, Clayton Campus. The project involved studying the reconfigurable capabilities of wireless sensor nodes that arrange into an ad-hoc network. A project named Smart Dust that began at the University of California at Berkeley was used as a basis for this study. The Smart Dust project was funded by Intel and the Department of Defense in America around 1995. The Smart Dust project uses the idea of processing, sensing, communications and power in one chip (or node). The sensor nodes were named motes by the people at Berkeley. The idea for the motes is to have a number of them dropped into an environment and scatter like dust then gather data which is sent back to a base. This is what a mote looks like:
My thesis abstract is shown below for anyone interested in this project.
Research
and development of networks of wireless sensors is growing in size. This is due
to advances in sensing devices and integrated circuit technology. Wireless
sensor nodes can now be purchased commercially for development of applications.
This development is performed through an operating system named TinyOS which is
free software and was designed specifically for wireless sensor networks.
Current research is miniaturizing these sensor nodes into dust size specs. There
has been some research into reconfiguration of these sensor nodes and this
research has looked at reconfiguration of sensor node behavior. This thesis will
look at the issues associated with reconfiguration of the sensor nodes and
TinyOS and provide a grounding to further research into having reconfigurable
hardware on a sensor node. In this research, the TinyViz simulator found in
TinyOS is used to test reconfiguration capabilities.
More information about the Smart Dust project can be found by accessing the TinyOS website
The work I have completed over the year involved a research proposal, a literature review, two presentations and a thesis. These can be accessed by following this link. The current results I have obtained can be accessed by following this link.
Email me for any information.