CS G250:Wireless Networks Spring 2007 Sensor Network Project

Due Date: Tuesday, March 27

In this project, you will program a network of wireless sensor nodes.  The code will be developed over the TinyOS operating system and will run on a number of Tmote Sky sensors that we have acquired recently.  The assignment can be entirely developed and simulated on your home machine using the simulator TOSSIM, that is available with the TinyOS distribution.  You can work on this assignment in groups of 3.  Each group will get 2 sensor motes to play around. These will not be enough for testing your code properly, but it is enough to learn basic programming steps and be able to see simple programs in action.  For the project, you can simulate your code on your home machine using TOSSIM.  Once your code works well on the simulator, we can test it in the lab with a larger collection of motes (10-12). Here is some warm-up work to help you prepare for your sensor programming project.

I. Installation You can get Moteiv toolkit installation CD from Tao Jin (@WVH208), or you could download it from moteiv website. download The installation guide could be downloaded from here. Please note that we have limited number of motes and they are expensive, so please take good care of your motes and make sure you return the mote in working condition at the end of the semester.

II. Getting started We strongly recommend you to test your installation after you complete step 1. You could try installing Blink application to your motes. Blink is a very simple nesC application provided by TinyOS. You could install it by going through the following steps. connect 1 mote to the usb interface on your machine. (As to how to install the driver, please refer the   quick start guide of moteiv) $cd /opt/tinyos-1.x/apps/Blink $make tmote $make tmote reinstall,1 The LED blinking very quickly indicates that program is being written to the mote. After the program is completely installed on the mote, the Blink application will be automatically executed. The LED on the mote will bink every 1 second. Another application named Delta, is mentioned in the "Tmote Sky Quick Start Guide". Other tips: Go to the TinyOS tutorial, study Lesson 1 through 8. Pay attention to the sample programs and programming model of NesC. All the examples in the tutorial can be tried out on TOSSIM - the sensor network simulator. The command to compile a PC version of the program is "make pc", and the program is stored under the build/pc directory in your program directory.

III. Go through the TinyOS tutorial Go to the TinyOS tutorial, study Lesson 1 through 8. Pay attention to the sample programs and programming model of NesC. All the examples in the tutorial can be tried out on TOSSIM - the sensor network simulator. The command to compile a PC version of the program is "Make pc", and the program is stored under the build/pc directory in your program directory. Read the TOSSIM tutorial for issues in controlling the simulation. Optional: Read the nesC Language Reference Manual. (Lessons 1 through 8 of the TinyOS tutorial should suffice for the assignment.)

IV. Toy project using two motes You have the first mote do light sensing. If the light level is above a certain threshold, this mote will notify the second mote via radio, so that the second mote will turn on its LED. If the light sensed by the first mote is below some threshold, it will send the notification to the second mote, and that mote will turn off the LED. This project is NOT required, thus won't be graded. However, this would definitely help you prepare for the final project, since you would know better about nesC, radio communication, multihop, sensing data collection, etc. after you are done with this toy project.

V. Sensor Programming Project The goal of the sensor project is to set up a shortest-path spanning tree over the nodes reachable from a central node.  At the completion of the computation, each node will display its distance (in number of hops) to the central node.  More details and hints will be added shortly.