Design of a sensor protocol suite for VLSI implementation

This paper describes the design and development of an integrated, VLSI based node for use in distributed sensor networks. The objectives of the effort include the design, simulation, and development of an energy aware protocol stack that scales to thousands of nodes, and is easily implemented in commercial VLSI chips. Each node in the sensor network includes a passive infrared sensor for target detection and tracking, a GPS receiver, a flexible, programmable system on a chip processing element, and a commercial ISM band transceiver. The software supports target detection and tracking, energy efficient network initialization, medium access, and routing protocols to provide multi-hop packet communication. This paper provides a description of the hardware platform, the software environment, and the simulation results for a typical 100 node sensor deployment