Low Power Operating System and Wireless Networking for a Real Time Sensor Network

Wireless networking of sensor devices is becoming more pervasive as technology, particularly miniaturization makes more sensing applications possible. Power efficient operating systems and network protocols are key components for wireless sensing applications. This paper presents a low-power operating system and associated wireless protocols that have been developed to operate in a centrally synchronized real-time sensor network. The developed operating system is generic and loosely coupled to a commercially available low-power microcontroller, thus providing an upgrade path as more efficient hardware becomes available. The inherent flexibility of the operating system allows the simple implementation of wireless protocols to suit specific applications. A number of example prototype systems have been developed and the results presented.