Design and Implementation of Mobile Sink Node in SDMA Applications

Mobile nodes are used to solve the problems existing in static wireless sensor networks such as energy hole, overlapping and hot spot etc. Through data gathering and relaying, mobile nodes can reduce the amount of data transmitting between the static nodes, which can conserve the power of these nodes and therefore to prolong the lifetime of network. In this paper we describe the DataTruck, a new open-source sensing platform specifically designed to support our experimental research in mobile sensor networks, which is used to collect data from static sensors. The DataTruck node is designed around the LM3S1607 ARM Cortex-M3 series Microprocessor and the IEEE 802.15.4 compliant CC2430 radio from Chipcon. The new features include support for a large storage and a rapid moving speed. Furthermore, we integrated a smart antenna system to gather the data from multiple static nodes concurrently which transmitting data using the same frequency of channel. The experiments show that DataTruck can collect data efficiently and reduce the average data delay by using SDMA technology.