Undergraduate research experiences with wireless sensor networks

Business Week has stated that "microelectronic sensor networks is one of the 21 most important technologies of the 21st century". Research and commercialization in this area remains immature, and large-scale wireless sensor network (WSN) deployments are few. The nature of WSNs motivates collaboration among researchers from diverse disciplines to leverage their skills to conduct meaningful experiments. An ongoing research project has been investigating the effectiveness of WSNs for spatial observations on environmental properties of soil. This project utilizes a combination of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) WSN subsystems and others designed and fabricated in-house by graduate and undergraduate students. Undergraduate students were also given the responsibility of implementing and deploying a complete end-to-end WSN solution, requiring them to get involved with concepts and tasks well outside of their educational "comfort" area. This paper documents our early experiences developing and deploying a WSN in the field. The novel aspect of this work was the high level of involvement at all technical levels by undergraduate students. Highlights of their efforts are reported, as are areas in need of improvement by graduate students and faculty researchers. Future undergraduate research areas are explored with suggestions on how WSN topics can permeate into undergraduate education.