Design and development of a wireless sensor network for the study of thermal instability of the Earth surface as a probable precursor of earthquake

Short term thermal anomaly over the earth surface near the epicenter is a proven fact and point of interest for the seismologists and geoscientists. The aim of this paper is to describe the research work on Design and Implementation of an IEEE 802.15.4 / Zigbee 2.4 GHz based Wireless Sensor Network remotely placed having local area coverage for the study of surface weather observation and validation of pre earthquake thermal anomaly over earth surface. Microcontroller and RF transceiver modules are the core hardware of this system. This paper explains the different steps involved in this work, starting from protocol selection, finalization of the network topology, component selection, selection of hardware and software design tools, testing and analysis of the performance of the system and finally implementation of the network. In order to analyze the performance of the system in terms of average packet loss error and average signal strength, two different tests have been carried out in different environmental conditions (both indoor and outdoor). In essence this manuscript points to some technical issues related with the hardware design and component selection as to develop an efficient system for achieving higher communication range and better input sensitivity.