Performance evaluation of an AODV-based routing protocol implementation by using a novel in-field WSN diagnosis tool

The Wireless Sensor Network research field has been growing and becoming more mature during the last decade since novel technologies and research lines have emerged targeting its usability under different real scenarios. One of the key topics to assure the efficiency and effectiveness of these technologies in final applications is the quality of the service and the reliability of the whole system, which strongly depends on the communication/topology capabilities as well as routing strategies within the WSN. In this context, it is essential to evaluate the implementation of routing algorithms and network connectivity in actual deployments, as a support to theoretical simulation models that cannot predict certain constraints and limitations in the system behavior. These are the main reasons why a real implementation of a flexible AODV-based routing protocol using a modular HW-SW node platform is proposed in this work, in addition to its practical assessment under real conditions by using a novel in-situ WSN performance evaluation tool. This tool has been created as a support for users during the in-field deployment analysis and diagnosis in real environments, in order to correlate theoretical results with the operation of the network beyond the typical study of routing performance with WSN simulators.