Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

Design and Implementation of a

Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino
https://doi.org/10.3991/ijoe.v13i11.7749

Yang Wang
Jilin Engineering Vocational College, Jilin, China
[email protected]

Abstract—For dealing with the limitations and deficiencies of present wire-

less sensor network nodes, including poor flexibility, low degree of variability,
low generality, Arduino development advantages are combined with ZigBee
wireless communication technologies characteristics. The versatility and flexi-
bility of wireless sensor network nodes and the cost and energy consumption of
nodes are studied. First of all, ZigBee communication protocol and networking
technology are studied, and based on this, communication protocols that the
subjects need are designed. Secondly, the hardware system of ZigBee wireless
sensor network node based on Arduino technology is discussed and designed.
In addition, suitable Arduino development panel is selected in accordance with
requirements of ZigBee wireless sensor network node. With the development
panel as the design prototype, the circuit of functional module is designed.
Thirdly, based on the wireless sensor network node communication protocol
and hardware design, the software system of wireless sensor network node is
designed and realized. The results showed that, through designing reasonable
software working flow and compiling efficient information acquisition and
wireless communication program, the intelligence orientation of node infor-
mation acquisition and information transmission is achieved. In a word, it can
be concluded that, combined with Arduino, a better function can be achieved.

Keywords—Arduino, wireless sensor, network node

1 Introduction

Wireless sensor network is a self-organized distributed system that is composed of

many sensor nodes in the sensing region through communication form. And it is cur-
rently the research field that has attracted much attention at home and abroad, involv-
ing a wide range of disciplines, with high degree of knowledge fusion and high re-
search heat. Wireless sensor network integrates sensor technology, modern network
technology, embedded computing technology and distributed information processing
technology. It can realize real-time sensing and acquisition of various types of moni-
toring object data information through cooperation of all kinds of integrated micro
sensors, and send the data information collected to users in the wireless communica-
tion form [1]. Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a self-organized network that does

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

not need to establish infrastructure in advance. Generally, a large number of wireless

sensor network nodes are randomly placed in the monitored area, thus forming a net-
work.
Arduino is a controller that has gained popularity rapidly in recent years. It is an
open source electronic prototype platform with high flexibility, easy to use and low
price. It has a rich interface, simple programming environment and great development
freedom. The scalability of Arduino is very high, and it can rapidly design and im-
plement personalized systems according to the field application requirements, and
reduce the cost and volume of the system while improving system efficiency and
versatility. This paper combines the ZigBee technology and wireless sensor technolo-
gy in Arduino technology advantages, and conducts the research on wireless sensor
network node that meets the needs of wireless sensor network applications. It is of
important significance to broaden the space available for the wireless sensor network
node.

2 Overview of related theories

2.1 Wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network can be defined as: the network system with multi hop and
self-organized nature composed of information wireless transmission means and the
wireless sensor network contains a large number of inexpensive sensor nodes with
volume miniaturization. The main purpose of wireless sensor network is to collect and
process the information which needs to be monitored in the monitored area, and to
process the collected monitoring result and transmit it to the user. From the definition
and purpose of the wireless sensor network, it can be seen that, sensor, monitoring
target and user are the basic elements of the wireless sensor network. Wireless net-
work is the key path linking the several basic elements, sensors, monitoring target,
and users form a sensor network through a wireless communication mode, sensing
and monitoring information in a collaborative manner. The characteristics of wireless
sensor network include: limited power supply capacity, limited computing and storage
capacity, limited information transmission capacity, large number of nodes, wide
distribution and so on [2].
The system architecture of the wireless sensor network is shown in figure 1. In
general, the nodes that make up wireless sensor networks can be divided into three
kinds according to their functions, namely sensor nodes, sink nodes and management
nodes. The working process of wireless sensor network system can be divided into
sensing data transmission direction and wireless sensor network control direction
according to data flow direction. Among them, the working process of sensing data
transmission direction is: the sensor nodes in the monitoring area that are scattered
placed are not only taken as the terminal node for collecting sensor information, but
also can be used as a routing node. The sensing information obtained by terminal
node, by single hop or multi hop, is transmitted to the sink node, and then transmitted
to the external network, such as UAV, satellite communication network or the Inter-

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

Target
Sensor nodes External network
Sink nodes

Remote task
User
management
Detection area
Name tag
Data transmission
Fig. 1. Structure of wireless sensor network system

net. Then, these data information, through the external network, are transmitted to the
remote task management nodes, so as to make a preliminary processing of the re-
ceived data on the remote task management node. Finally, remote task management
node will present the result data to the user after initial processing according to their
own needs. The working process of the wireless sensor network to control the direc-
tion is: users directly interfaced with the remote task management nodes, to send
wireless sensor network control information to the remote task management node, and
then, by the remote task manager node, it sends control information to the external
network. Next, the control information is sent to the sink node by the external net-
work and transmitted to the sensor node from the sink node [3].
Wireless sensor network nodes have different functions depending on the applica-
tion scenarios. In the same application scenario, wireless sensor network nodes will
also have functional differences depending on the specific work roles. However, the
wireless sensor network nodes in different application scenarios and the wireless
sensor network nodes with different working roles in the same application scene have
the same basic structure. The basic structure consists of four parts: energy supply
module, sensor module, processor module and wireless communication module.
Among them, the processor module can be divided into processor, memory device
and high application three parts; the sensor module can be divided into two parts:
sensor and A/D converter; wireless communication module can be divided into physi-
cal layer, medium access and RF (radio frequency ) three parts. The architecture of
the wireless sensor network node is shown in Figure 2 [4].

2.2 Arduino technology

Arduino was originated from instructional development and then used for commer-
cial development. It is a simple convenient and flexible software and hardware open-
source electronics prototyping platform, derived from a simple I/O interface of open
source code, and its development environment uses the programming language simi-
lar to Java and C language. Arduino mainly consists of two parts: one is the hardware
resources required by the development, including various types of Arduino circuit
boards; the second is the software resources needed for the development, including

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

Processor module

High-level
applications

Sensor module Memory Wireless communication module

A/D Media Physical Radio

Sensor Processor
Conversion access layer frequency

Energy supply module

Fig. 2. Structure of wireless sensor network node system

the unique development tools Arduino IDE programming environment and Arduino
programming language. In the use of Arduino as a development tool, first of all, it is
necessary to select a suitable Arduino circuit board for the development board accord-
ing to the development needs, and then to write the function code in the Arduino IDE
development environment. After the function code was written and compiled success-
fully, the function code is download to the chosen Arduino development board, and in
this way can the functions required by Arduino be achieved [5].
Arduino technology has gradually gained market acceptance and has been develop-
ing rapidly in recent years, all of which benefit from its different features from other
similar development technologies:

1. Arduino has various types of open circuit board design resources, and open pro-
gram interface and program. All developers can download to view existing open
source resources, and they can also upload the new research results in the field to
the network resource sharing. Developers, in the development process, according
to the official Arduino circuit board circuit diagram and PCB diagram, carry out
the hardware circuit simplified design, to develop with the functional circuit oper-
ating independently and that meets the needs.
2. Arduino board uses AVR series microprocessor with low price as the core control-
ler, and designs USB power supply interface, external DC interface and other pow-
er supply interfaces, which can not only reduce the development cost, but also en-
hance the use flexibility of development board in different environments.
3. Arduino circuit board designs the support board ICSP burning program function
and ICSP interface on the circuit board. Through the interface, the needed boot-
loader firmware is directly burned into the controller AVR chip without external
recording device. After the controller AVR chip gets the bootloader, the developer
can update the firmware directly through the serial port or USB-RS232 line.
4. Arduino development environment Arduino IDE can support a variety of operating
systems, and for Windows, Linux and Mac systems, there are the corresponding
executable versions.

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5. Arduino programming language is similar to C language that this language con-

tains a number of built-in functions. And these built-in functions can achieve a
simple function through the not complicated statement, such as some common sen-
sor communication, data conversion, serial reading and so on.

3 Method

As the basic unit of wireless sensor network, wireless sensor node design is the
premise and basis of constructing the wireless sensor network, and the hardware de-
sign of wireless sensor network node is the foundation of the whole node design.
Therefore, on the basis of Arduino open source hardware, with the consideration of
the low power consumption, scalability and ease of use, the hardware design of wire-
less sensor network nodes is carried out.
In combination with the actual requirements of the project, the wireless sensor
network node which is designed in this paper includes the sensor nodes as the termi-
nal nodes and the non terminal nodes as routing nodes and sink nodes. The terminal
node is mainly responsible for monitoring processing and transmitting the sensing
data, and the non terminal nodes are responsible for transmitting the sensing data to
the host computer in a variety of transmission modes. Although the two have different
working modes and functional requirements, they are basically the same in the for-
mation of the circuit hardware. As a result, this paper will take the generality as the
principle to only perform the hardware design of sensor nodes in wireless sensor net-
work, and the node can not only be used as a terminal node, but also as a non terminal
node [6].
According to the general basic structure of wireless sensor network node, it is
known that, the hardware system of wireless sensor network node must include pro-
cessor module, sensor module, wireless communication module and power module.
Among them, the power module serves as the power supply function component to
provide energy for the entire sensor node, and the remaining three functional modules
of the sensor nodes are energy consuming modules. In addition, the debugger and the
download program interface should be considered to be added in the hardware design.
Considering the low power consumption, small size, low cost and high flexibility
design requirements of the node, the overall framework design of the hardware sys-
tem of sensor nodes is shown in figure 3.
The processor module, as the core module of sensor nodes, is composed of the pro-
cessor chip MCU and peripheral circuit that ensures the normal operation. In addition,
for the direct communication of sensor nodes and PC, the processor module also in-
cludes serial USB conversion chip. The sensor module is composed of digital inter-
face, analog interface, and sensor power switch circuit. The digital interface and ana-
log interface in the module are the interface of the sensor and the sensor node, and the
sensor power switch circuit, through the sensor controlling a power supply off, is
designed so as to reduce the energy consumption of the sensor module. The wireless
communication module is composed of a radio frequency module supporting the
ZigBee protocol. The power supply module consists of a battery power supply circuit,

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

Sensor module Processor module Wireless

communication module
Digital MCU
Sensor
interface
power
Serial USB Radio frequency
switch
Analog conversion
circuit
interface chip

Battery energy Battery-powered Power supply USB power

monitoring circuit circuit switching circuit supply circuit
Power module
Fig. 3. The overall framework of hardware framework of sensor node

a USB power supply circuit, a power supply mode switching circuit and a battery
energy monitoring circuit [7]. The design of the battery energy monitoring circuit
aims to realize the intelligent management of the power supply of the node. It is worth
noting that the design process of sensor node is divided into two parts. One part is the
function module circuit design with reference to Arduino Uno R3 circuit design, and
the other part is the circuit module design that Arduino Uno R3 cannot meet the sen-
sor nodes and other functions. After the completion of the circuit design, the sensor
node PCB design and PCB board physical production are carried out.

4 Result and discussion

The whole framework of wireless sensor network software system can be divided
into two parts: node software and host computer software. The wireless sensor node
software includes the terminal node software and sink node software. The terminal
node software mainly realizes the function of data acquisition and processing of vari-
ous types of sensor data, acquisition and processing of power battery information,
network identification, network joining, and transmission of sensor information and
power battery information in the form of wireless communication according to the
communication protocol [8]. The sink node software's main function is to achieve
networking, discovering equipment, receiving the sensor data and power battery in-
formation data sent by the terminal node, and transmitting sensor information and
power battery information in the form of serial means according to the communica-
tion protocol. The sensor data and battery information received by the serial transmis-
sion. The host computer software is responsible for reading the information received
by the serial port, then analyzing the data obtained in accordance with the communi-
cation protocol and processing accordingly, and finally displaying the required infor-
mation in an intuitive form. The wireless sensor network node software system is
constructed, as shown in figure 4.

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

PC software subsystem

Aggregate node
software subsystem

Wireless communication
Terminal node
software subsystem Serial communication
Fig. 4. The software system of wireless sensor network node

The working process of the software system of wireless sensor network node is:
the equipment after powering on, the terminal node and sink node are networked, and
then the sensor data and the power battery remaining electricity data are collected and
processed by the terminal node. Next, in accordance with the ZigBee protocol, they
are transmitted to the sink node in a wireless way, the sink node, after receiving the
data sent by the terminal nodes, through USB connection line, is sent to the PC port,
and the host computer on the PC machine reads the information obtained from the
port and stores according to the classification [9]. And after the processing of all kinds
of information, they are displayed on the interface of the host computer on the side of
the PC machine.

5 Conclusion

The design scheme of ZigBee wireless sensor network node based on Arduino is
presented, and from the design and implementation of the node hardware system and
software system two aspects, the specific content of the design scheme is discussed.
What’s more, the feasibility and practicability of the scheme are verified by the node
function test and performance test in the actual environment. Specifically, the ZigBee
communication protocol and networking technology are studied, and on this basis, the
communication protocol needed for the subject is designed. Besides, the hardware
system of ZigBee wireless sensor network node based on Arduino technology is de-
signed and implemented, and then, combined with ZigBee wireless sensor network
node needs, the appropriate Arduino development board is chosen, and the circuit
design of functional module with the development board for the design prototype is
conducted. The design of Arduino based ZigBee wireless sensor network node is
feasible, which provides a reference for wireless sensor network node design and
practical application.

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Short Paper—Design and Implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network Node Based on Arduino

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7 Author

Yang Wang is with Jilin Engineering Vocational College, Jilin, China.

Article submitted 24 September 2017. Published as resubmitted by the author 15 October 2017.

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