MoteMaster: A Scalable Sensor Network Testbed for Rapid Protocol Performance Evaluation

Testbeds are necessary to evaluate the performance of network applications for a wide range of deployment scenarios. Especially in wireless sensor networks, where the performance highly depends on environmental conditions, traditional computer-based simulations provide validity to only limited extent. Different approaches have been carried out to develop generic testbeds for protocol evaluation, but they suffer from automation deficiencies such as the ability for fast iterations over different topologies or parameter settings. Those features are nevertheless necessary to study the performance of a developed solution in a variety of conditions. Furthermore, the legacy data storage of other testbeds make later processing less tractable. We present a scalable wireless sensor network testbed that provides a generic interface which can easily be incorporated into existing network research and data mining software. It uses a generic data storage format that allows ease of analysis. Higher utilization of resources by means of parallelisation of individual user tasks and multi-user support makes this testbed a valuable tool. It consists of inexpensive commercial off-the-shelf hardware and as it is open-source, requires no additional investment in legacy software.