title: On the relevance of using open wireless sensor networks in environment monitoring.
abstract: This paper revisits the problem of the readiness for field deployments of wireless sensor networks by assessing the relevance of using Open Hardware and Software motes for environment monitoring. We propose a new prototype wireless sensor network that fine-tunes SquidBee motes to improve the life-time and sensing performance of an environment monitoring system that measures temperature, humidity and luminosity. Building upon two outdoor sensing scenarios, we evaluate the performance of the newly proposed energy-aware prototype solution in terms of link quality when expressed by the Received Signal Strength, Packet Loss and the battery lifetime. The experimental results reveal the relevance of using the Open Hardware and Software motes when setting up outdoor wireless sensor networks.
authors.affiliation: Department of Computer Science, University of Cape Town, 7707 Cape Town, South Africa; E-Mails:  inggor001@uct.ac.za  (G.I.);  sctsim003@uct.ac.za  (S.S.).
authors.forename: Antoine B
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Bagula
authors.forename: Gordon
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Inggs
authors.forename: Simon
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Scott
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zennaro