w-iLab.t Zwijnaarde

In Zwijnaarde, Belgium, located approximately 5 km away from the "w-iLab.t Office", a second w-iLab.t deployment is found in an unmanned utility room (size: 66m x 22.5m). As opposed to the Office deployment where people work and where there are also operational wireless networks (WLAN, DECT phones) installed, there is a lot less external radio interference in the Zwijnaarde deployment. At this location, hardware is hosted at another 60 spots. Every spot is equipped with:

  • 1 embedded PC with 2 Wi-Fi a/b/g/n interfaces and 1 IEEE 802.15.1 (Bluetooth) interface
  • a custom IBBT-Rmoni sensor node with an IEEE 802.15.4 interface
  • an “environment emulator” board (see above).

 

There are two additional possibilities in the Zwijnaarde deployment:

  • A number of cognitive radio platforms (including USRPs) as well as  specialized spectrum scanning engines are available at this location. This enables state-of-the art research in the field of cognitive radio and cognitive networking.
  • A deployment with 20 mobile robots is planned for 2012. This will allow experiments to be scheduled that include up to 20 mobile nodes (similar to the 60 fixed nodes) to be operated in the environment.

The figure below presents a high-level overview of the Zwijnaarde testbed architecture for the “regular” wireless nodes.

For a full high-level overview including the cognitive devices, please refer to the schematic figure below. All nodes and devices are available to the experimenters in a similar way as for the w-iLab.t office deployment.