Deployment of Sensor Networks: Problems and Passive Inspection

Deployment of sensor networks is concerned with setting up an operational wireless sensor network in a real-world setting. Unfortunately, deployment is a labor-intensive and cumbersome task as environmental influences often degrade performance or trigger bugs in the sensor network that could not be observed during lab tests. In this paper, we, firstly, study existing sensor networks to identify and classify typical problems that have been encountered during deployment. Secondly, we investigate whether and how the existence of these problems can be detected by means of passive inspection, where messages exchanged in the sensor network are overheard and analyzed such that modification of the sensor network is not required. We, thirdly, show how passive inspection can be implemented in a practical tool.