Design and Implementation of a Low-Power Wireless Sensor Network Platform Based on XBee

Wireless sensor network (WSN) plays an important role in monitoring applications in many areas. This paper presents a WSN called EN-Nets which is based on a newly designed small-size and low-power sensor node (EN-Node) for monitoring real-time environmental conditions. Detailed design and implementation of the sensor node for sensing and communicating environmental parameters are described. A power management method utilizing transistor switch connections to sensors to control their operations was used to reduce the overall power consumption of each sensor node. The important testing results for the proposed sensor board are discussed, such as routing method, transmission packet delay and sensors' performance. A comprehensive and interactive graphical user interface program has been developed to allow users to interact with the sensor network system. A real-time deployment has been performed in a campus area and presented in here.