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Monitoring large scale IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee based Wireless Sensor Networks
Ref: CISTER-TR-131101       Publication Date: 6 to 7, Nov, 2013

Monitoring large scale IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee based Wireless Sensor Networks

Ref: CISTER-TR-131101       Publication Date: 6 to 7, Nov, 2013

Abstract:
Monitoring of large scale Wireless Sensor Networks is a fundamental task to track the network behavior and measure its perfor- mance in real-world deployments. ZigBee is a standard protocol that operates on top of IEEE 802.15.4 PHY and MAC layers, and represents a very prominent technology for WSNs as it is gaining more and more interest by the research community. Designing a Monitoring tool for IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee becomes of a paramount importance and many commercial products have been proposed. However, similar commercially available products for monitoring and testing ZigBee based WSNs suffer from being either a proprietary solution not flexible to adapt to different protocol stacks or simply too expensive, typically require special sniffing hardware and not suitable for large scale WSNs. In this paper, we present Z-Monitor, a free and extensible monitoring tool and protocol analyzer solution to control and debug IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee-compliant WSNs. In addition, we detail our experience in deploying Z-Monitor in several testbeds ranging from small to medium to large scale, where the network is monitored by multiple sniffing points, and the architecture of the tool is able to present a global picture of the network as if only one sniffing point is able to collect the whole packets. Finally, we show how Z-Monitor is able to measure network performance in real world deployments.

Authors:
Stefano Tennina
,
Olfa Gaddoura
,
Fernando Royo
,
Anis Koubâa
,
Mário Alves


7th European ZigBee Developers' Conference.
Munich, Germany.



Record Date: 1, Nov, 2013