A Novel Hardware Platform of WSNs

Sensor node in WSNs is basic bottle neck which restricts realization of WSNs, because of their very limited processing, communication ability and power source supply. With the advancement of IC design and fabrication technology, release of microcontroller (MCU) with more powerful processing, lower power consumption and cost is expectable. So this paper introduces a novel sensor node based on 32 bits MCU LPC2138, wireless communication unit of the sensor node is composed of CC2420 which is the first kind of radio frequency chip compatible with IEEE802.15.4. A brief review of sensor node in different stage shows that single chip sensor node is coming true, and more and more 32 bits microcontroller used in WSNs should be a trend. This paper presents design of this sensor node, including processing unit, RF unit, power supply unit and sensor unit, and gives some solutions which avail design process. At last, power consumption measurement of sensor node is done and the results are given.