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TDDI07 Distributed embedded software and networks

Lab3, Energy aware data gathering


The main objective of this lab is to make you understand the challenges and trade-offs of energy efficient wireless communication using sensor nodes.

Preparatory questions


You are required to read lab 3 instructions and the additional resources on it in order to be able to answer the following questions before starting the lab. The second lesson provides good explanations for answering these questions as well.

  1. Low-power listening:
    1. What is the duty cycle? Which is its unit?
    2. A certain mote is duty cycling. How can you make sure that it receives the packet that you want to send to it?
  2. Serial communication:
    1. Which are the interfaces used for PC-mote communication?
    2. Which component provides them?
    3. Which commands can you use for sending a message?
    4. Write the java command from the TinyOS tool set to sniff the packets in a Linux terminal.

Lab 3


In the lab 3 you will deepen your understanding on the concept of low-power listening explained in the second lesson and use it in real motes with several configurations. This will make you understand some of the factors that impact energy consumption on low-power wireless communication.

There are 2 asignments in lab 3. In order to reduce the energy consumption, a mote can switch off the radio interface for a while and listen for very short intervals to detect transmissions. In the first assignment you will use different sleeping configurations and measure the duty cycle. In the second assignment, you will measure the duty cycle of a sender and receiver for different parameter configurations. More detailed information can be found in lab 3 instructions.

Additional resources for this lab:

To hand in:

You must demonstrate the application running in the sensor nodes to the lab assistant during lab hours. Moreover you should send a link to a branch (or tag in master) of your git repo to your assistant. In the repo you should have completed a report containing (use the report template):

  • Correct answers to the lab preparatory questions
  • Graphs and tables of the values obtained in the two assignmetns
  • Explanation of the graphs by answering to questions formulated in the lab instructions

The e-mail must contain the string
TDDI07 Lab X Group Y
where X is the lab number in the subject name and Y is the group number.


Page responsible: Mikael Asplund
Last updated: 2020-11-17