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I. I NTRODUCTION
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Fig. 2.
Fig. 1.
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FOLEA AND MOIS: LOW-POWER WIRELESS SENSOR FOR ONLINE AMBIENT MONITORING
Fig. 3.
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Fig. 4.
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Fig. 5.
Fig. 6.
server and are sent to the Xively web-site. For being correctly
interpreted by the web-site, the data have to be bundled
into an EEML (Extended Environments Markup Language)
script. The advantage of using an application running on a
PC consists in the ability to read data from multiple devices
and to send a reduced number of packets to the Internet
without performing a large number of accesses. For a low cost
solution, the server and the application that runs on the server
can be omitted, including the enclosing of the data in an proper
format into the sensor. This scenario has a major disadvantage,
the use of the TCP/IP protocol, which leads to an increase in
the overall power consumption. An advantage of the solution
presented in Figure 7 is the fact that data preprocessing takes
place in the application, the firmware being simplified, and the
connections with the Internet being reduced.
B. Data Transmission
The Wi-Fi standard was chosen for communication because
the number of sensors used in the scenario of indoor environmental monitoring is not large and there is no need for
complex routing protocols. The access point, or the router,
covers, in this case, the entire area of the house and the
wireless sensor nodes can associate and send messages directly
to it. Furthermore, environmental sensors do not have critical
real time constraints which can be met only by protocols
such as ISA100 or WirelessHART. The major advantage of
using Wi-Fi technology consists in the use of the existing
infrastructure, which can be found in almost every home,
where Internet connectivity or digital television is present.
The major disadvantage lies in the increased power consumption, which directly influences the node lifetime. However, as the next section will show, this drawback can be
overcome.
The protocol chosen for data transmission is UDP, instead
of TCP/IP, offering lower package sizes, increased speeds, low
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TABLE I
M ESSAGE C OMPONENTS
Fig. 8.
latency and connectionless communication. The messages consist of fixed-size numerical codes, which are called operation
codes or opcodes. These describe the settings of the sensor or
measurement results. As it can be seen in Table I, the opcodes
represent pairs of hexadecimal numbers associated to a specific
function, with the first element being the function code, and
the second its associated value. For avoiding overhearing
problems, an unidirectional scheme was chosen, the device
only sending short messages separated by the specified interval [18]. Because household environmental information is not
sensitive from the security and privacy points of view, standard
WPA2 encryption is used. The possibility of changing the
security protocol, depending on the one used in the wireless
computer network to which the sensor node connects, is also
available.
IV. P OWER C ONSUMPTION E STIMATION
The entire system has a CR123A 3 V battery as the main
power supply. This is the reason why several mechanisms for
ensuring the low-power operation of the device, were implemented. They lead to the achievement of a period between
one and three years of operation using a single commercial
off-the-shelf battery. The configuration menu allows for values
between one minute and 60 minutes to be set as the period
between two consecutive measurement and data transmission
actions. The system is a duty cycled one, spending most
of the time in sleep mode. The ratio between wakeup and
sleep times can take values between 1:8 and 1:500. This
alternation leads to a power consumption between one and two
hundred microwatts. Wakeup time lasts for only a few seconds,
depending on the value of the CO2 sensors digital filter,
Fig. 9.
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Fig. 10.
Fig. 11.
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[18] C.-S. Lee, D.-H. Kim, and J.-D. Kim, An energy efficient active RFID
protocol to avoid overhearing problem, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 14, no. 1,
pp. 1524, Jan. 2014.
[19] A. Pandharipande and S. Li, Light-harvesting wireless sensors
for indoor lighting control, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 13, no. 12,
pp. 45994606, Dec. 2013.