Radio Link Design Framework for WSN Deployment and Performance Prediction

To address the needs of Cyber Physical System applications, and particularly for an easy implementation of wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN), semiconductor companies are offering single-chip solutions embedding in the same device a microcontroller core with a wireless transceiver. These internet-on-chip devices support different connections [1-4]: Bluetooth, ZigBee and Bluetooth Low Energy at 2.4 GHz, Wi-Fi at 5 GHz, sub-GHz ISM (Industrial, Scientific, Medical) at 868/915 MHz or 315/433 MHz. The used microcontroller cores range from 8-bit 8051 for low-power short-range solutions to 32-bit Cortex-M ARM ones. The max. sustained bit-rates are from 250 kb/s (sub-GHz links) to 4 Mb/s (Wi-Fi). For example, in case of TI cc254x and cc31xx devices, there are different trade-offs between receiver sensitivity (from -74 dBm to -100 dBm) and maximum transmitter power (from 0 dBm to 5 dBm). These performance parameters lead to different link distances, but also to different power consumption levels, from few mW to several hundreds of mW. A range extender device can be added [5] to improve RX noise figure (down to 4.7 dB) and TX power (up to 22 dBm), although for a power overhead of 480 mW.