Design of a Wireless Sensor Network-Based IoT Platform for Wide Area and Heterogeneous Applications

Internet of Things (IoT) is not only a promising research topic but also a blooming industrial trend. Although the basic idea is to bring things or objects into the Internet, there are various approaches, because an IoT system is highly application oriented. This paper presents a wireless sensor network(WSN)-based IoT platform for wide area and heterogeneous sensing applications. The platform, consisting of one or multiple WSNs, gateways, a Web server, and a database, provides a reliable connection between sensors at fields and the database on the Internet. The WSN is built based on the IEEE 802.15.4e time slotted channel hopping protocol, because it has the benefits such as multi-hop transmission, collision-free transmission, and high energy efficiency. In addition to the design of a customized hardware for range extension, a new synchronization scheme and a burst transmission feature are also presented to boost the network capacity and reduce the energy waste. As a result, the proposed platform can fulfill the high throughput requirement for high-rate applications and the requirement of long battery life for low-rate applications at the same time. We have developed a testbed in our campus to validate the proposed system.