I am currently working on developing a sensor network testbed with
mica2 sensor motes. I had some basic issues with the implementation and
the control of the testbed and I thought this would be a great way to understand whats going on.
The issues are as follows:
1. Is it possible to control the toplogy of the network within a table of
say 4x5 feet. I am working with about 16 sensors and I would like to
construct several toy topologies that I can think off using those 16
sensors. However, if I use the surge application or any other similar
application (surge reliable), it seems like the topology is automatically
constructed in some wierd fashion. For instance, I noticed that nodes that
are not necessarily close to the base station act as an intermediate node
to a node that is closer to base station. Also, sometimes, the nodes are
directly connected to the base station making it a single hop network.
Even if I reduce the transmission range to minimum power, the maximum
number of hops I can get is at most 3 or 4. Will aluminium cans on top of
the antennas work to reduce the transmission range of radio transmission?
Even though I tried it, it seems to be not working. Any feedback on this
would be greatly appreciated!
2. Also, is it possible to control the speed with which the application
responds to the events. For instance, in surge or surge reliable
application, is it possible to ensure that the changes such as turning on
or off of motes are quickly captured by the application. Using surge or
surge reliable, it takes almost two minutes to see any changes. If it is
an artifact of the routing process used by this application, I would
really appreciate if you can let me know the path to the routing protocol
file for these applications ( surge and surge_reliable).
3. Also, I have some issues with the lifetime of the batteries when I am
running the surge or surge reliable application continously. They seem to
get drained out after about 20 to 25 mins when run continously. However,
if I run the application again after a couple of hours, they again seem to
run for about half hour. Is this normal?
I would greatly appreciate if you have encountered any of these problems
and have a feasible approach to it that you would be willing to share with
me. You can reach me at ramv@ece.gatech.edu
Thank you very much for your attention.
