A reconfigurable hardware platform for low-power wide-area wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Low power, large-area wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been experiencing rapid growth in a wide range of applications, such as environmental monitoring applications and natural disaster early warning systems. The WSN consists of numerous nodes with sensing, computation, actuation, and radio communication capabilities. Dynamically reconfigurable hardware and context-aware operation to optimize performance and functionality and to prolong the lifetime of sensor nodes are critical goals in the design of distributed sensing systems, especially for battery-based systems being deployed in complex geographic areas where are hard to approach. In recent years, Programmable System-on-Chip (PSoC) technology is emerging as an efficient solution for achieving the dynamic hardware reconfiguration of a sensor node in a single chip. That aims at optimizing the use of resources, minimizing of energy waste, and system size according to the requirements of the applications. This paper presents the implementation of a configurable hardware platform for remote sensing systems based on PSoC and LoRa technology. The proposed hardware design stands out for high performance, ultralow-power, providing long-range communication as well as reconfigurable interfaces in communicating and manipulating with various types of sensors and actuators. The experiments to evaluate the functional requirements and energy consumption of the design were investigated with positive results.