Design Tools for Sensor-Based Science

We describe the architecture of software tools that aid scientists in designing and programming wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The goals of our system are (1) to reduce the complexity of deployment by automatically programming a sensor network and database based on a visual description of a site and experiment and (2) to provide a simple, intuitive network design tool that explores trade-offs in cost, reliability, and network lifetime. We motivate the need for such tools based on our experience in deploying a sensor network used to study soil ecology. We also present techniques for the development of site-specific transmission models, the placement of motes and gateways, and data processing in hierarchical networks.