Design and energy consumption analysis of a custom built wireless sensor node for environmental monitoring.
Farooq Sultan, Ahmar Shafi, Salam A. Zummo · 2011
Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have become increasingly important in recent times. Sensor nodes are the building blocks for a typical WSN. Due to their limited computational, communication and energy abilities, the sensor nodes serve as the deciding factor for a given network design. As the fabrication technology improves, highly powerful, yet energy efficient, components are available to realize a WSN while keeping the cost at an affordable level. This paper introduces a novel wireless sensor node based on the powerful 8-bit Atmel ATMega128L microcontroller unit (MCU) equipped with the CC2420 transceiver having complete compatibility with the IEEE802.15.4. This paper enlightens the design details of the new node; providing complete details of the components used and the sensor unit design. Towards the end, the power consumption measurement results are given along with the experimental setup details.