PhyNode: An intelligent, cyber-physical system with energy neutral operation for PhyNetLab

This paper introduces an ultra-low power cyber-physical system called the PhyNode with energy harvesting capabilities. This hardware is used for testing and deploying low power wireless sensor networks focused on real time material handling systems. PhyNode is wireless sensor network node in Physical Internet Laboratory called PhyNetLab. It is deployed in a materials handling facility focused on investigating various use cases of physical internet deployments in the field of logistics. PhyNode has a TI MSP430FR5969 with a sub-1GHz band transceiver powered with a battery and sports photovoltaic cell for energy harvesting which is the focus of the conducted research on PhyNode. The hardware platform also has a TI CC2530 System on Chip with a 2.4GHz transceiver that supports IEEE 802.15.4, ZigBee and RF4CE applications and implements a controller network supporting experimentation with 350 nodes. This paper outlines the system design description of such hardware. In addition, a comparison between such existing platforms is also presented in this paper.