Anatomy of a Sensor Node

This chapter explores the general concept of sensor nodes and some examples. It provides the main differences between sensor nodes and more traditional IT systems. These sensor node needs several components, such as microcontroller, radio transceiver, sensor, and battery. One of the most important properties to understand about sensor node hardware is its power consumption. Each of the components of a sensor node requires energy to operate. The book uses the Contiki operating system, which is one of the most‐used sensor network operating systems for education and research. The chapter reviews Cooja simulator, that offers the possibility to test the applications and algorithms before going to the real sensor node. This It takes the Contiki code that you have written and simulates its execution on virtual sensor nodes. Sensor nodes uses communication stacks. The most widely used communication stack is the OSI model, which underlies the Internet.