Abstract
This paper presents the use of WSN in educational research as a platform for enhanced learning through hands-on modular experiments to illustrate abstract theoretical concepts in diverse courses in Electrical Engineering. The WSN consists of Mica2 motes with on-board sensors, wireless communication antennas, and processors that are programmed using NesC. Three sets of experiments feeding into different courses (e.g., wireless embedded networks, detection and estimation, stochastic processes, probability theory, statistical pattern recognition, and digital signal processing) and illustrating different theoretical concepts are presented in details. These experiments can be used as demos in those courses and/or can be incorporated as hands-on laboratory projects to go hand in hand with the course. Assessment of the experiments as pedagogical tools are also presented through well designed evaluation questionnaires given to the students. Assessment survey shows that both the sensor network platform and the novel experiments built on them are pedagogically successful tools.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
TinyOS, http://www.tinyos.net
The "moteLab" at Harvard University, http://motelab.eecs.harvard.edu/
The Wireless Sensor Network Laboratory (WSNL) at Stanford University, http://wsnl.stanford.edu/
The Embedded Networks and Applications Laboratory "ENALAB" at Yale University, http://www.eng.yale.edu/enalab/
Networked & Embedded Systems Laboratory (NESL) at University of California, Los Angeles, http://nesl.ee.ucla.edu/
UCLA’s Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, http://cens.ucla.edu/
The MANTIS (MultimodAl NeTworks of In-situ Sensors) project lab, a part of the Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, http://mantis.cs.colorado.edu/tikiwiki/tikiindex.php
Abrach, H., Bhatti, S., Carlson, J., Dai, H., Rose, J., Sheth, A., Shucker, B., Deng, J., Han, R.: MANTIS:System Support For MultimodAl NeTworks of In-situ Sensors. In: 2nd ACM International Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications, WSNA, pp. 50–59 (2003)
Bhatti, S., Carlson, J., Dai, H., Deng, J., Rose, J., Sheth, A., Shucker, B., Gruenwald, C., Torgerson, A., Han, R.: MANTIS OS: An embedded multithreaded operating system for wireless micro sensor platforms. Mobile Networks & Applications 10, 563–579 (2005)
Mache, J., Bulusu, N., Tyman, D.: Making Sensor Networks Accessible to Undergraduates Through Activity-Based Laboratory Materials. In: Proceedings of IEEE SECON (2008)
Mache, J., Bulusu, N., Tyman, D.: Sensor Network Lab Exercises Using Java and Sun Spots. Poster at ACM SIGCSE (2008)
Crossbow Technology Inc., http://www.xbow.com
Matlab, http://www.mathworks.com/
Cygwin, http://www.cygwin.com
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering
About this paper
Cite this paper
Taslidere, E., Cohen, F.S., Reisman, F. (2010). Enhancing Learning Using Modular Wireless Sensor Networking (WSN) Hands-On Experiments. In: Zheng, J., Mao, S., Midkiff, S.F., Zhu, H. (eds) Ad Hoc Networks. ADHOCNETS 2009. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 28. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11723-7_34
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11723-7_34
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-11722-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-11723-7
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)