Wireless Sensor network Design for Flexible Environmental Monitoring

Business Week has stated that "microelectronic sensor networks is one of the 21 most important technologies of the 21st century. "The nature of wireless sensor networks (WSN), that is, the design, deployment, data harvesting, maintenance, and troubleshooting, motivates collaboration among researchers from diverse disciplines to leverage scientific, engineering, and technological skills to investigate environmental issues with high spatial and temporal fidelity. An ongoing research project has been investigating the effectiveness of WSNs for spatial observations on environmental properties of soil. This project utilizes a combination of commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) WSN subsystems and others designed and fabricated in-house by graduate and undergraduate Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology (ECET) students. A graduate student was given the responsibility of designing and implementing a new WSN node. Undergraduate students were given the responsibility of implementing and deploying a complete end-to-end WSN solution. These assignments required each student to be involved with concepts and tasks well outside of their educational "comfort" area, motivating them to perform research, and in many cases learn on their own to accomplish the desired outcome. This paper documents early experiences with developing and deploying a wireless sensor network as a research instrument in the field. The novelty of this work is the high level of responsibility given to undergraduate students necessitating intimate involvement at all technical levels by each team member. Highlights of their efforts are reported, as are areas in need of improvement or more intervention by faculty researches. Further research areas for technology students are explored with suggestions on how WSN topics can permeate into graduate and undergraduate technology education.