• Journal of KIISE:Computing Practices and Letters
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.341-351
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• 2008

Communication in wireless sensor networks comprising a plurality of sensor nodes located in an ad hoc environment is unidirectional in that data gathered by sensor nodes are transmitted to a sink node and not vice versa. In those networks, it is not possible for a server or a gateway to send commands to the sensor nodes to determine whether some previously received data are valid when the data indicate unusual conditions, which makes it difficult to make appropriate reactions to the unusual situations. This paper proposes and implements a TDMA-based sensor network communication protocol named BiWSLP(Bidirectional Wireless Sensor Line Protocol) supporting bidirectional communication capability. The BiWSLP is an extension of the WSLP, a unidirectional sensor network communication protocol based on the TDMA protocol. To test the feasibility of the proposed BiWSLP, we construct a virtual bridge management system capable of sending commands to sensor nodes as well as collecting data from the sensor nodes. Based on the test results of the virtual bridge management system, we show the applicability and advantages of the BiWSLP in terms of energy efficiency and bidirectional communication capability.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.867-875
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• 2009

A wireless sensor network inherently comprises a plurality of sensor nodes widely deployed for sensing environmental information. To add new functions or to correct some faulty functions of an existing wireless sensor network, the firmware for each sensor node needs to be updated. Firmware update would be quite troublesome if it requires the gathering, reprogramming, and redeploy of all of already deployed sensor nodes. Over-the-air programming (OTA) facilitates the firmware update process, thereby allowing convenient maintenance of an already-deployed sensor network. This paper proposes and implements a remote firmware update mechanism for a TDMA-based wireless sensor network, in which the firmware for sensor nodes constituting the TDMA-based sensor network can be easily updated and the update process can be conveniently monitored from a remote site. We verify the validity of the proposed firmware update method via experiments and introduce three wireless sensor networks installed in outdoor sites in which the proposed firmware update mechanism has been exploited.