Sensor network architecture for deployment over low-voltage powerlines

This paper presents the design and implementation of an efficient sensor network (SN) over standard powerlines. As an application of the proposed SN, a home security and surveillance system was designed and implemented. The SN consists of a array of various types of security and surveillance sensors such as passive infrared motion detectors, glass/window break sensors, chemical/toxic gas sensors and smoke sensors. All the sensors will be connected to a gateway and a control panel through the preinstalled powerlines. The gateway communicates with the sensors array using a medium access control (MAC) protocol which is created by combining the common Round Robin MAC and the Stop-and-Wait flow control protocol. The practical experiments conducted on the system have confirmed that the proposed design is robust, efficient and has several advantages over wireless and twisted-pair wired sensor networks. The proposed network is implemented using the low-cost TDA5051A powerline modem and the 16F628A peripheral interface controller.