RT Lab is India’s first remote triggered laboratory in the computer science and engineering area. As wireless sensor networks (WSN) are emerging worldwide, the lack of e-learning facilities degrades the availability and usage of WSN applications, mainly in universities. The Remote Triggered Wireless Sensor Network Lab aims in providing an easy, efficient, interactive and user friendly environment to the students, researchers etc., which can trigger their inquisitiveness and give them the equipments and materials needed for the experimental studies. The resources are shared to them in a virtual manner wherein they can conduct the experiments online and observe the outputs as in a real lab through an effective visualization tool. This is an experimental wireless sensor network which is envisioned to provide a practical experience of designing, deploying and implementing wireless sensor networks in both indoor and outdoor conditions.
The Lab has a WSN Testbed which uses Memsic micaz motes, where we deployed 9 sensor networks with more than 100 sensor nodes in indoor and one sensor network with around five motes in outdoor. The other hardware components used in this testbed include around 21 memsic interfacing boards, dielectric moisture sensors, on-board sensors, data acquisition boards, digital multimeters and custom made power supply board for uninterrupted functioning of the testbed. Using Flash Media Server, the videos of the WSN test bed are getting streamed.
Project goals
The remote triggered lab provides an intuitive web-based interface, where educators and learners can learn theoretical concepts in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Wireless Communication, Propagation Effects, Energy management in WSN, Wireless Sensor Network Algorithms etc
This lab includes 12 experiments demonstrating these concepts by providing study materials, animations, interactive simulations and remote panel. The remote panel is an interface for virtually accessing and triggering the hardware components which is deployed in our lab. The concepts learned using animations, simulations etc can be better understood through the remote experimentation whose output will be displayed as charts and/or physical representation in the remote panel.
This lab will provide students practical experience in designing, deploying and implementing wireless sensor networks in both indoor and outdoor conditions. Remote users will have a permanent test-bed for development and testing of concepts
Meeting and Workshops Conducted
A workshop was conducted as part of 6th IEEE international conference on Technology for Education (T4E), Amritapuri (18 -22 Dec 2014).
A three day National level Workshop, “Large Scale Wireless Sensor Networks – Protocols, Programming and Remote Triggering (LS-WSN 2015)” from 29 June to 1 July 2015
Publications
Over the Air Programming Method for Learning Wireless Sensor Networks Sangeeth K, Preeja Pradeep, Rekha P, Divya P, Arya Devi R D, Maneesha Sudheer Springer LNEE Series, 7th International Conference on Information Science and Applications (ICISA’16), February 15 -18, in HCMC, Vietnam, 2016. 2016
