A SystemC-TLM Platform for Wireless Sensor Networks Design Exploration

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN 1 ) have gained worldwide attention in recent years, due to their potential for development of applications in various areas: health, environmental monitoring, control and monitoring processes, etc. Due to the complexity of WSN design, it is necessary to employ design methodologies at a very high level of abstraction which allow the exploration of diverse alternatives of hardware and software architectures. In this research a generic platform using SystemC TLM (Transaction Level Modeling) to support the design of system-level WSN was developed. The platform allows the system’s functional evaluation at a very high level of abstraction. A virtual functional model of a WSN could be built using platform components to estimate system performance and power consumption. A model of a WSN using the MSP430 Microcontroller, the CC2420 radio transceiver and a wireless network model were built to show the effectiveness of this approach. The simulation results were highly satisfactory.