Testing Low Power IP-Based Sensor Networks an a Forest Environment

In previous research we showed that a fully IP (standards compliant) sensor network could be used over a large mountainous study area (mountainsensing.org). One of the advantages of these low power 6LoWPAN networks is their automatic mesh networking, which not only adapts to faults but allows systems to communicate over longer distances than high power radio. Another advantage is the web-like CoAP protocol we used which allows data to be gathered using simple Python code. Advances in protocol standardisation and the increased availability of sub-GHz radios being included in ICs for IoT and other applications means there is a greater choice of hardware.

This paper describes our experiments in a forest environment, where there are signal issues due to trees and foliage but also radio shadows due to the terrain. They are thus representative of many earth science sensing scenarios. We used a low cost system-on-chip microcontroller which includes a low power 868MHz radio (Microchip SAMR 30) and the open source RIOT operating system (www.riot-os.org) to provide the network functionality. The studies were carried out in The New Forest in the UK.