WSNs are traditionally considered key enablers for the IoT
paradigm. However, due to the widening variety of applications,
it is increasingly difficult to define common requirements for the
WSN nodes and platforms.
This paper addresses all phases of the practical development
from scratch of a full custom WSN platform for environmental
monitoring IoT applications. It starts by analysing the applica-
tion requirements and defining a set of specifications for the
platform. A real-life, demanding application is selected as ref-
erence to guide most of node and platform solution exploration
and the implementation decisions.
All aspects of the WSN platform are considered: platform
structure, flexibility and reusability, optimization of the sensor
and gateway nodes, optimization of the communication proto-
cols for both in-field and long range, error recovery from com-
munications and node operation, high availability of service at
all levels, application server reliability and the interfacing with
IoT applications. Of particular importance are IoT requirements
for low cost, fast deployment, and long unattended service time.
All platform components are implemented and support the
operation of a broad range of indoor and outdoor field deploy-
ments with several types of nodes built using the generic node
platforms presented. This demonstrates the flexibility of the
platform and of the solutions proposed.
The flow presented in this paper can be used to guide the
specification, optimization and development of WSN platforms
for other IoT application domains.