Wireless Sensor Networks to Characterize Photovoltaic Panels in Harsh Environmental Conditions

Wireless sensor networks are widely used in many applications like security, healthcare and defense. They have lot of design constraints in terms of power consumption, processing power etc. They have lot of applications in environmental engineering also. This paper discusses in detail about hardware, firmware and application interface design for a wireless node and base station for one such environmental application, to characterize photovoltaic panels in harsh environmental conditions. Later part of the paper discusses about the implementation of the wireless sensor node for measuring the surface temperature of the PV panel, the results of the experiment, future work and conclusion.