A Reconfigurable Prototyping Platform for Smart Sensor Networks

In this paper, a new concept for a very flexible and modular prototype platform for rapid prototyping of wireless sensor networks is presented. We propose to use a FPGA with high gate count as core of the platform. The FPGA is utilized to attain 3 major goals for the prototype platform: to emulate arbitrary mote architectures even including smart motes with high system complexity, to realize flexible interfaces to sensors and radio transceivers, and to embed versatile debugging and system monitoring functionality in the mote prototypes. The presented prototype platform is suitable to realize complete sensor networks based on different mote architectures, different wireless communication schemes, and arbitrary application domains. The design concepts and implementation aspects of the platform are presented and discussed in detail.