PotatoNet - Outdoor Testbed to evaluate WSNs exposed to real environmental conditions
The PotatoNet is a testbed which allows testing of hardware and routing protocol for our INGA sensor nodes under real world conditions. The field nodes are controlled by a central instance.
For testing the sensor nodes, they are connected to embedded Linux boards (WRTNode), which enables the possibility to reprogram the devices at any time. The are connected to an industry grade PC via Ethernet, which means that access is ensured constantly. They are powered using passive Power-over-Ethernet, so they can be turned off completely in order to reset them.
Sets of scripts allow the users to update the firmware of all nodes with a single command. They use a serial interface for debugging purposes, which is accessible in the network, so that log data of all nodes can be connected in a central place.
Internet access is available via wired interfaces as well as cellular networks. If any of the connections breaks down, the other link is used as fallback. Long distances up to several hundreds of meters are bridged using copper wires and a VSDL link.
Are components are exposed to any weather conditions, which requires a sturdy housing. The field nodes are enclosed in PVC tubes. The control PC and the Ethernet switch are located in a box made of aluminium equipped with a fan for keeping temperatures low even in summer.
Seasons
News
- 30.08.2017: End of the student project and collection of the INGA sensor nodes.
- 23.06.2017: Istallation of PotatoMesh nodes on the field.
- 01.01.2017: PotatoNet has moved to a garden and was surrounded by an electric fence for evaluations - Brzzz
PotatoScanner
The PotatoScanner is a system that is used to detect the stress of plants. Therefore, a software system composed of an Android application and a Raspberry Pi program. Its primary use is to gather temperature data from senors attached to a field sprayer. This allows for the measurement of plant temperature of an entire field. The temperature data is saved with the current GPS position of the field sprayer. The software system is integrated into a network consisting of sensor nodes on the field and a sink at the farm. Through the usage of DTN the Pi is able to carry data from the sensor nodes to the sink. The software system saves all DTN-Events occurring on the Pi and thus creates a database which can be used to evaluate the network.
Student project Wireless Sensor Networks - 'Special'
In summer term 2017 the topic of our Wireless Networking Lab was focused on Precision agriculture and Smart Farming applications, respectively. The scenario of this hands-on on lecture included the deployment of sensor nodes on the potato field. The sensor nodes were used to measure several environmental parameters like soil- and air temperature.
Data Download
The installation and the operation of WSNs in real environments is often a tough job. Hence, we would like to spare other research groups this pain and share our measurement data.
- Longterm study of Undervolting in real WSN
- Long-term temperature measurement of WSN housings
- Thermal energy harvesting - Monitoring of the soil temperature
We performed several more evaluations. More data are available on request. Please contact the PotatoNet Team.
Open Source Downloads
We we will provide links to custom hard- and software we designed for PotatoNet here.
- 3G Failover script
- INGA v1.6.1 undervolting capable Wireless Sensor Node
- WRTnode OpenWRT-Image with SPI and I2C support
Publications
- Björn Ulrich Gernert: On the Usability of Wireless Sensor Networks in Smart Farming Applications, Dissertation, January 2021 (dbbsmods00069271, DOI, BibTeX)
- Ulf Kulau, Silas Müller, Sebastian Schildt, Felix Büsching and Lars Wolf: Investigation & Mitigation of the Energy Efficiency Impact of Node Resets in RPL, in Ad Hoc Networks, 2021 (Kulau:AdHoc-Networks-2021, DOI, BibTeX, accepted for publication)
- Lars Wolf: Erweitertes Zusammenwirken in der Landwirtschaft - zur Diskussion, in Zusammenwirken von natürlicher und künstlicher Intelligenz, Haux, Reinhold and Gahl, Klaus and Jipp, Meike and Kruse, Rudolf and Richter, Otto, Wiesbaden, pages 89-96, Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 2021 (Wolf2021, DOI, BibTeX)
- Jan Schlichter, Björn Gernert and Lars C. Wolf: Evaluating the Suitability of LoRa for Potato Storage Monitoring, in Proceedings of the 18th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze, FGSN19, pages 5-8, September 2019 (Schlichter:FGSN2019, BibTeX)
- Björn Gernert, Jan Schlichter and Lars Wolf: PotatoScanner - A Mobile Delay Tolerant Wireless Sensor Node for Smart Farming Applications, in Proceedings of the 15th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems, DCOSS 2019, Santorini Island, Greece, May 2019 (gernert:DCOSS2019, DOI, BibTeX)
- Robert Hartung: On the Challenges in Energy-Constrained Outdoor Wireless Sensor Networks: Trade off between Efficiency and Robustness, Doctoral Collquium, Shenzhen, China, November 2018 (hartung:sensys18:dc, BibTeX, Slides)
- Björn Gernert, Fabian Schwartau, Sebastian Raabe, Joerg Schoebel, Karsten Schubert, Stephan Rottmann and Lars C Wolf: Evaluation of Suitable Radio Frequencies for Data Transmission in Potato Warehouses, in 2018 IEEE 15th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), Chengdu, China, October 2018 (gernert:MASS2018, DOI, BibTeX)
- Björn Gernert and Lars Wolf: Demo: An Interactive Demonstration of the PotatoScanner, a Mobile DTWSN Node, in Proceedings of the 17th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze, FGSN18, Braunschweig, Germany, pages 73-74, September 2018 (gernert:FGSN18, BibTeX)
- Jana Huchtkötter, Andreas Reinhardt and Ulf Kulau: PulseHV: Opportunistic Data Transmissions over High Voltage Pulses for Smart Farming Applications, in Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems, DCoSS 2018, New York, USA, June 2018 (Kulau:DCOSS2018, BibTeX, Runner-up for best paper)
- Robert Hartung, Ulf Kulau and Lars Wolf: Adaptive Wireless Sensor Networks: Robust but Efficient, in Proc. IDEA League Doctoral School on Transiently Powered Computing, Delft, The Netherlands, IDEA League (TU Delft, RWTH Aachen University, ETH Zurich, Chalmers University, Politecnico di Milano), November 2017 (hartung:tpc2017, BibTeX)
- Ulf Kulau, Daniel Bräckelmann, Felix Büsching, Sebastian Schildt and Lars Wolf: REAPer - Adaptive Micro-Source Energy-Harvester for Wireless Sensor Nodes, in Twelfth IEEE Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications 2017 (IEEE SenseApp 2017), Singapore, October 2017 (kulau:SenseApp:2017, BibTeX, Slides, Runner-up for best paper)
- Stephan Rottmann, Alexander Willecke, Jan Käberich, Georg von Zengen and Lars Wolf: miniDTN: A DTN Stack for 5EUR-WiFi-Nodes, in Proceedings of the 16th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze, FGSN17, Hamburg, Germany, September 2017 (rottmann:FGSN17, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Silas Müller, Sebastian Schildt, Arthur Martens, Felix Büsching and Lars Wolf: Energy Efficiency Impact of Transient Node Failures when using RPL, in Proceedings of the 18th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2017, Macau, China, June 2017 (Kulau:WOWMOM2017, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Stephan Rottmann and Lars Wolf: Demo: Brzzz - A Simplistic but Highly Useful Secondary Channel for WSNs, in Proceedings of the International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, EWSN 2017, Uppsala, Sweden, February 2017 (Kulau:EWSN2017, BibTeX, Slides, Poster, Best Demo Award)
- Robert Hartung, Ulf Kulau, Björn Gernert, Stephan Rottmann and Lars Wolf: On the Experiences with Testbeds and Applications in Precision Farming, in Proceedings of the First ACM International Workshop on the Engineering of Reliable, Robust, and Secure Embedded Wireless Sensing Systems, FAILSAFE'17, Delft, The Netherlands, pages 54-61, ACM, 2017 (Hartung:Sensys:2017:FAILSAFE, DOI, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Johannes van Balen, Sebastian Schildt, Felix Büsching and Lars Wolf: Dynamic Sample Rate Adaptation for Long-Term IoT Sensing Applications, in IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things 2016 (WF-IoT), Reston, USA, December 2016 (kulau:wf-iot:2016, BibTeX, Slides)
- S. Rottmann, R. Hartung, J. Käberich and L. Wolf: Amphisbaena: A Two-Platform DTN Node, in 2016 IEEE 13th International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS), pages 246-254, October 2016 (Rottmann:MASS:2016, DOI, BibTeX, Slides)
- Stephan Rottmann, Björn Gernert and Lars C Wolf: Demonstration of the Wireless Two-Platform DTN Node Amphisbaena, in The 13th International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2016) (MASS 2016), Brasilia, Brazil, October 2016 (Rottmann:MASS:2016:demo, BibTeX, Poster)
- Georg von Zengen, Robert Hartung, Ulf Kulau, Felix Büsching and Lars Wolf: Low Cost Temperature Controlled Testbed for WSNs, Augsburg, Germany, September 2016 (FGSN:2016, BibTeX)
- Björn Gernert, Stephan Rottmann and Lars C Wolf: Poster: PotatoMesh - A Solar Powered WSN Testbed, Paderborn, Germany, July 2016 (gernert:MobiHoc:2016:poster, BibTeX)
- R. Hartung, U. Kulau and L. Wolf: Distributed Energy Measurement in WSNs for Outdoor Applications, in 2016 13th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), pages 1-9, June 2016 (Hartung:Secon:2016, DOI, BibTeX)
- R. Hartung, U. Kulau and L. Wolf: Demo: PotatoScope - Scalable and Dependable Distributed Energy Measurement for WSNs, in 2016 13th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), pages 1-3, June 2016 (Hartung:Secon:2016:Demo, DOI, BibTeX)
- Ulf Kulau, Stephan Rottmann, Sebastian Schildt, Johannes van Balen and Lars C Wolf: Undervolting in Real World WSN Applications: A Long-Term Study, in The 12th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems 2016 (IEEE DCoSS 2016), Washington D.C., USA, May 2016 (kulau:dcoss:2016, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Felix Büsching and Lars Wolf: IdealVolting - Reliable Undervolting on Wireless Sensor Nodes, in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), New York, NY, USA, ACM, January 2016 (kulau:TOSN:2016, BibTeX)
- Ulf Kulau, Tobias Breuer and Lars C Wolf: A Clustering-Based Characteristic Model for Unreliable Sensor Network Data, in IEEE World Forum on Internet of Things 2015 (WF-IoT), Milan, Italy, December 2015 (kulau:wf-iot:2015, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Sebastian Schildt, Stephan Rottmann and Lars Wolf: Paint it Black - Increase WSN Energy Efficiency with the Right Housing, in The 6th Workshop on Real World Wireless Sensor Networks, RealWSN15, Seoul, South Korea, November 2015 (kulau:RealWSN, BibTeX, Slides)
- Ulf Kulau, Sebastian Schildt, Stephan Rottmann, Björn Gernert and Lars Wolf: Demo: PotatoNet - Robust Outdoor Testbed for WSNs: Experiment Like on Your Desk. Outside., in Proceedings of the 10th ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks, CHANTS '15, Paris, France, pages 59 - 60, ACM, September 2015 (Kulau:chantsDEMO2015, BibTeX)
- Ulf Kulau, Sebastian Schildt, Stephan Rottmann, Björn Gernert and Lars Wolf: PotatoNet - Outdoor WSN Testbed for Smart Farming Applications, in Proceedings of the 14th GI/ITG KuVS Fachgespräch Drahtlose Sensornetze, FGSN15, Erlangen, Germany, September 2015 (kulau:FGSN15, BibTeX, Slides)
Project members at IBR
| Name | Phone | Room | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | kulau[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de | ||
| Stephan Rottmann | rottmann[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de | ||
| Dr. Björn Gernert | gernert[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de | ||
| Robert Hartung | hartung[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de | ||
| Prof. Dr.-Ing. Lars Wolf | wolf[[at]]ibr.cs.tu-bs.de | +49-531-3913288 | 138 |
Theses
| Title | Type | Supervisor | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Implementing and Evaluating AWuR on Amphisbaena | Bachelor Thesis | Dr. Björn Gernert, Stephan Rottmann | finished |
| Development of a wireless humidity sensor for food storage facilities, ... | Master Thesis, Project Thesis | Dr. Björn Gernert | finished |
| LoRa meets DTN - Development and evaluation of a delay tolerant LoRa based sensor network for food storehouses, ... | Master Thesis | Dr. Björn Gernert | finished |
| Advance Precision Farming by delay tolerant gathering of sendor data, ... | Bachelor Thesis | Dr. Björn Gernert | finished |
| Online modeling on wireless sensor nodes under energy and memory considerations, ... | Master Thesis | Robert Hartung | finished |
| Integration eines dynamischen Energiemodells zur Simulation der Energieaufnahme drahtloser Sensornetze unter realen Umgebungsbedingungen | Master Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| Verteilte Energiemessung in drahtlosen Sensornetzen im Außeneinsatz | Master Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| Entwicklung eines Micro-Source-Energy-Harvesters für Sensorknoten | Master Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| Datenerhebung von IEEE 802.15.4 Radios unter verschiedenen Temperatureinflüssen | Bachelor Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau, Robert Hartung | finished |
| Energieeffiziente Messstation für verteilte Trockenstressmessungen an Kartoffelpflanzen | Master Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| An adaptive prediction approach for low power WSN | Master Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| Abhärtung von Programmen in fehleranfälligen WSNs | Bachelor Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau, Arthur Martens | finished |
| Energieeffizienzanalyse des RPL-Protokolls im Falle transienter Knotenausfälle | Project Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau, Arthur Martens | finished |
| Zielfunktion zur effizienten und robusten Wegewahl in WSNs | Bachelor Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
| Energy Harvesting für Sensorknoten unter Nutzung der Bodentemperatur | Bachelor Thesis | Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau | finished |
If you are interested in writing a thesis regarding this project, please feel free to contact Prof. Dr. Ulf Kulau.