d-Argus: a Distributed IEEE 802.15.4 Sniffer

In the development and testing phases of new WSNs, it is of paramount importance to get insight into the traffic exchanged within the network. For this purpose, the sniffers are an irreplaceable tool. In the case where WSN covers a large area, single sniffer cannot provide a trace of the complete data traffic, due to the attenuation of the wireless signal. This motivates the implementation of a distributed solution with multiple physical sniffers connected over a network. Overhearing the same data traffic by different physical sniffers is likely in such a scenario, resulting in multiple copies of the same data packet appearing in the merged trace. To overcome this issue, realtime traffic filtering needs to be applied. This paper, motivates and proposes a design of a distributed sniffer that can cover a large deployment. The proposed solution is based on the MQTT protocol and Argus software, which enables the sharing of the saved traffic traces through a cloud.