A Dual-Network Testbed for Wireless Sensor Applications

Abstract

A dual-network Cyber-physical Networking (CPN) testbed developed at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is described. The CPN testbed consists of two geographically disparate wireless sensor networks connected by a traditional TCP/IP network and enables peer-to-peer communication between each sensor in the network. The functionality of the testbed is enhanced by a range of software tools that support remote programming and network monitoring, and real-time visualization of sensor data. The resulting architecture supports easy deployment and evaluation of applications for both traditional and interconnected wireless sensor networks. To demonstrate the features of this testbed, a novel ping application was developed and deployed as a proof-of-concept application for peer-to-peer communication in geographically separated wireless sensor networks. Experimental evaluations of the ping application yield insight into the communications overhead that can be expected in future applications of peer-to-peer interconnected sensor networks.

Experimental Research Testbeds for Large-Scale WSNs: A Survey from the Architectural Perspective

“…When the radio severance occurs among discrete spaces such as rooms and floors, a clustered WSN field structure is also adopted on a single site. As the latter case, WSN clusters of CPN [29] are deployed, respectively, on a separate building and are connected via the Internet. Due to the radio severance between WSN clusters, the scalability in the context of this paper may remain the same for both cases, even if the size of the WSN testbed increases.…”

“…NetEye uses 12 Dell Vestro laptops for 130 nodes. As an exceptional case, CPN [29] employs a USB-to-UTP converter as a backchannel gateway where each USB-to-UTP converter can serve up to 4 nodes. In this design, Ethernet wires for the broadband-BC part eliminate the need for active USB cables or additional hubs as signal repeaters in its native-BC part.…”

“…Only a few WSN testbeds take this WSN field structure [29,43]. WSN testbeds adopting this WSN structure are deployed either on single site or on multiple sites.…”

“…Typically, WSN testbeds with the hybrid-BC adopt USB as their native part and Ethernet or WiFi as their broadband part. Although a limitation is enforced by USB to the number of nodes per back-channel gateway, the limitation can be avoided by adding more back-channel gateways [24,29,33].…”

“…This WSN layout inherently requires a large space; when preserving the normal radio transmission power in WSNs, distance between nodes in the layout ranges from 10 meters to 30 meters. Indeed, several large-scale WSN testbeds with over 100 nodes, for example, CPN [29], Indiya [33], and TWIST [24], are typically deployed over several floors. As a side effect, the cost of initial deployment and maintenance usually increases as the network size becomes larger.…”