Abstract :
Experimental Facilities for Wireless Sensor Networks the European WISEBED approach Sensor network technology has been under investigation for several years now and has matured to a degree which allows for commercial real-world implementations at a large scale. Before taking the step to deployment, however, it is crucial to evaluate the system, because detecting faults during runtime is extremely costly especially for sensor networks just imagine reaccessing an installation which has been deployed in a jungle or under water. While simulations have been an important evaluation tool for sensor network technology for a long time, it has also become clear that achieving results that reflect the reality to a high degree is extremely difficult. It will thus be of major importance to do real experiments with systems and applications just implemented before deploying it. For that reason, multipurpose testbeds are required, which allow testing of different aspects of a sensor network system, such as scalability, mobility, support for heterogeneity etc. The European project WISEBED is currently creating such a testbed by building a federation of several existing physical sensor networks throughout the world. In this talk, we´ll present the general idea and structure of WISEBED and highlight specific features, such as wireless links which are an important means to create flexible and powerful experimentation environments.