The IBM wireless sensor networking testbed

This paper describes the wireless sensor networking testbed built at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. The testbed has been used to address a wealth of exciting research challenges. Performance evaluations have been carried out with short-range wireless communication technologies, which are highly relevant for sensor networking such as IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee networks, Bluetooth WPANs, and IEEE 802.11b WLANs. With the testbed, the merits of wireless mesh networking for range extension and reliability enhancement have been explored. New light-weight messaging protocols for communication between sensors and an application server have been tested which allow to bring messaging-oriented middleware down to very low-end sensors and actuators. In addition, the testbed has been used to develop sensor applications for remote metering and location-sensing