Title
Opal: A Multiradio Platform for High Throughput Wireless Sensor Networks
Abstract
Design of current sensor network platforms has favored low power operation at the cost of communication throughput or range, which severely limits support for real-time monitoring applications with high throughput requirements. This letter presents the design of the versatile Opal platform that couples a Cortex M3 MCU with two IEEE 802.15.4 radios for supporting sensing applications with high transfer rates without sacrificing communication range. We present experiments that evaluate Opal's throughput and range when operating with one or two radios, and we compare these results with an Iris-based node and TelosB nodes. We introduce the spatial energy cost metric that measures the energy to transfer one bit of information in a unit area for comparing the performance of the platforms. The results show that Opal operating with dual radios increases the throughput compared to single radio platforms with the same data-rate by a factor of 3.7, without sacrificing communication range. Opal operating with one radio can deliver a 460% increase in throughput over other single radio nodes at reduced range. We also analyze the implications of Opal's design for multihop communication, showing that the dual radio architecture removes the bandwidth bottleneck in multihop communications that is inherent to single radio platforms.
Year
DOI
Venue
2011
10.1109/LES.2011.2177065
Embedded Systems Letters
Keywords
Field
DocType
high throughput requirement,single radio node,single radio platform,communication throughput,communication range,multiradio platform,dual radio architecture,reduced range,high throughput wireless sensor,dual radio,multihop communication,opal operating,energy efficiency,throughput,spread spectrum communication,wireless sensor networks,wireless sensor network,high throughput,microcontrollers,energy efficient,sensor network
Bottleneck,Computer science,Efficient energy use,Bandwidth (signal processing),Throughput,Wireless sensor network,Energy consumption,Low-power electronics,Spread spectrum,Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
3
4
1943-0663
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
19
1.30
8
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Raja Jurdak1106992.45
Kevin Klues224514.29
Brano Kusy3608.48
Christian Richter4465.33
Koen Langendoen53372285.21
Michael Brünig61459.90