Wireless network topology for monitoring mobile agents

Abstract

A wireless network of multiple sensor nodes for monitoring large numbers of mobile agents is described and investigated. Wireless monitoring provides time critical information from a number of data sources allowing near real-time analysis of the collected data. The developed wireless network provides a moderate data rate, is able to support many wireless nodes and is a low power solution. Novel network structures have been developed to satisfy all of these requirements.This paper evaluates a number of currently available wireless communication protocols, concluding that a Bluetooth wireless network satisfies the above criteria. To support a large number of devices, topologies using inter-piconet and piconet sharing methods have been developed. These network structures are outlined in detail and have been developed with the current Bluetooth hardware limitations in mind. The proposed wireless networks have been developed to be implemented with current Bluetooth hardware. A summary of network performance is included for each developed network structure, and from these figures an appropriate network structure has been chosen that satisfies the requirements of a wireless sensor network for monitoring mobile agents.