WSN testing environment with energy consumption monitoring and simulation of sensed data

Design and development of wireless sensor networks implies software simulations and hardware tests. Through this paper, the testing environment developed in the lab for WSN nodes energy consumption monitoring and hardware simulation of the nodes behavior in a small scaled network is presented. It is designed to individually control the sensed data and the power supply of each sensor node from the network using a wired network of microcontroller based modules that are assigned to one or several sensors. These modules are linked on the same CAN bus used as communication media together with a computer system which manage the message flow. This system can be easily expanded to support more nodes, only by connecting the pairs of microcontroller boards - wireless sensors to the CAN bus. It was designed to support new features by defining and implementing related CAN messages and updating the software running on microcontroller boards.