A Rapid Way to Build Prototypes of Wireless Sensor Network Based on Virtual Instruments Technology

This paper presents a new approach to build prototypes of Wireless Sensor Network rapidly based on virtual instruments technology. There are two different methods introduced in this paper. One of the two methods uses WSN (short for Wireless Sensor Network) Node and WSN Gateway manufactured by NI (short for National Instruments). The other method adopts Compact RIO (short for Reconfigurable Input and Output) and GPRS (short for General Packet Radio Service) module. Though they are two different methods, they have the same structure. Both of the two methods adopt DAQ (short for data acquisition) card and sensors to acquire specified data. The DAQ card and sensors compose a node which can sense and process data. Different nodes form a local area WSN. Nodes within a local area WSN communicate with each other via ZigBee or other means of communication. The local area WSN can access the Internet via a WSN Gateway or GPRS module. Modular hardware and graphic programming language LabVIEW (short for Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) are adopted in this proposed approach.