Implementation of a Physical Layer Wireless Sensor Network Testbed using Software Defined Radios

Physical layer measurements are difficult to obtain in commercially available sensor nodes as these are usually application specific, with little to no monitoring of metrics outside the application layer. As such, a physical layer testbed is implemented using software defined radio (SDR). This testbed would allow rapid prototyping of wireless sensor networks (WSN) without the need for protocol specific hardware due to the flexibility of SDRs. Six parameters at the physical layer are measured by the testbed: signal to noise ratio (SNR), bit error rate (BER), symbol error rate (SER), packet error rate (PER), throughput, and latency. Blocks were made to measure each of these parameters over an IEEE 802.15.4 standard communication system in GNU Radio using the ADALM-PLUTO SDR. Other modulation schemes such as frequency shift keying (FSK) and on-off keying (OOK) over different frequencies were also implemented to prove the flexibility of the testbed. With a modular approach, the testbed should not only be easily extendable to conduct measurements and alterations to other levels of the communication protocol stack but also be a viable tool in RF instrumentation.