Deployment of MICAz mote for Wireless Sensor Network applications

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a new technology that enables remote monitoring and data gathering to be realized in many applications such as traffic control, health monitoring, disaster management and many others. WSN is built by connecting a group of nodes together to perform the required tasks. These nodes cooperate and automatically create a network among themselves. One of the most common wireless sensor node, also commonly known as mote, used is the MICAz mote. MICAz is easy to implement and can be used to build WSN for various applications. This paper demonstrates the deployment of MICAz motes using a test case of soil moisture sensor for environmental monitoring applications. A detailed description of hardware and software requirements, sensor calibrations, mote firmware, testing, debugging and verifications is given. This will enable researchers and engineers to quickly obtain a working knowledge in the implementation of various WSN applications.