Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

Research Advised by Professor Kristofer S.J. Pister

Pister Group:  List of Projects | List of Researchers

BPN592: Workshop: Hands-On Intro to Low-Power Wireless Sensor Networking

Dr. Anita Flynn
Dr. Thomas Watteyne
Leo Keselman
2010

This IAB we have prepared a half-day tech-transfer workshop for industrial members teaching background, fundamentals, advantages and limitations associated with standards-based low-power sensor networks. Open standards are important because they allow technologies to gain traction and industries to blossom. Open-source reference implementations take things one step further. Because standard protocols invariably allow optional configurations, a reference implementation gives people a concrete example of how to get started. The proposed IEEE802.15.4e standard prescribes time...

BPN572: Decentralized TSCH Scheduling for a Floating Wireless Sensor Network

Andrew Tinka
Kevin Weekly
Thomas Watteyne
2011

The Floating Sensor Network system is a fleet of robotic sensor packages with water quality sensors, GPS receivers, and 802.15.4 wireless communication modules. They are deployed in riverine and estuarine environments to observe the water flow and propagation of constituents such as salt, nitrates, and other contaminants. Their observations will be used for real-time estimates and forecasts of the system state. The connectivity is dynamic and unpredictable, making a centralized scheme challenging. Our project will develop networking algorithms and methods to enable reliable...

BPN576: Off-the-Shelf Sensors for Wireless Smart Home Applications

Alex Sun
James Peng
Edmund Ye
Thomas Watteyne
2010

The goal of this project is to show proof of concept that, with widely available and relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf sensors, wireless low-power sensor networks can be easily created and integrated into everyday life. The eventual objective is to equip a house with a wide variety sensors and actuators, allowing a user to wirelessly monitor and control his or her home. Installation should be easy and flexible enough so that the wireless motes of the network can be added on to any pre-existing structure.

Project end date: 02/04/11

BPN470: Low Power All-Digital Transceiver for Wireless Sensor Network

Richard Y. Su
2011

Radios available today are designed to be high performance devices, and they consume about 30mW (CC1101). We would like to demonstrate an all-digital transceiver using only standard cell library components. This new design paradigm will focus mainly on low cost, ease of design, portability, and also decent performance. This transceiver will operate somewhere between 50 MHz and 1000 MHz, and it will have reasonable sensitivity and wide-band linearity across this band with low power consumption. No passive components, except for capacitors, will be used. The goal of this is to develop...

BPN477: OpenWSN: Open-Source Standards-Based Protocol Stacks for Wireless Sensor Networks

Thomas Watteyne
2010

We are building a multi-platform, multi-operating system, fully standards-compliant interoperable wireless sensor network stack. Major standardization bodies have been looking at how wireless multi- hop networks should operate reliably (IEEE 802.15.4E, IETF RPL), how they can integrate within the Internet (IETF 6LoWPAN), and how utilities and end users should interact (OpenADR). All of these standards are being finalized. The OpenWSN project aims at federating these standards into a fully- functional protocol stack, at implementing these on a number of hardware and software platforms...

BPN624: The Internet of Things: IPv6 for Multihop Wireless Sensor Networks

Branko Kerkez
Fabien J. Chraim
2012

The Internet of Things enables great applications, such as energy-aware homes or real-time asset tracking. With these networks gaining maturity, standardization bodies have started to work on standardizing how these networks of tiny devices communicate. We strongly believe IEEE802.15.4e TSCH is the most reliable and energy-efficient MAC protocol for low-power motes. The goal of this project is to provide open-source implementations of a complete protocol stack based on the finalized Internet of Things standards. This implementation can then help academia and industry verify the...

BPN388: Micro Autonomous Air Vehicles

Ankur Mehta
2012

This project considers the design and implementation of a guidance and control system for small scale autonomous air vehicles, in particular helicopters. A two gram inertial navigation unit has been designed and built for this purpose, using a three axis angular rate sensor and three axis accelerometer for trajectory measurements, along with a microprocessor and 2.4 GHz 802.15.4 radio. A smart IR camera is used to determine localization information. This extremely low mass wireless enabled sensor mote can be used as a platform for two-fist sized autonomous vehicles, and this system...

BPN696: Energy Monitoring for the Smart Building Using Low-Power Wireless Sensors

Kevin Weekly
Brittany Judoprasetijo
2013

Future office spaces and buildings will collect energy consumption data from the electrical devices used by their occupants, from refrigerators to the humble cell phone charger. This goal of this project is to develop and evaluate the devices enabling dense measurement of energy consumption throughout the building. We have started developing two hardware platforms. First, we designed a sensor circuit board which can be quickly installed by placing it between a plug and the outlet. Our second design is a custom designed surge protector can measure six independent outlets as well as...

BPN648: Fully-Integrated, Low Input Voltage, Switched-Capacitor DC-DC Converter for Energy Harvesting Applications

Michael C. Lorek
2014

This project explores the design of a fully integrated, switched-capacitor DC-DC converter to convert small amounts of energy from photovoltaic or other low voltage energy sources. Clever bootstrapping techniques are used to ensure circuit startup without high-voltage or mechanical assists. Nanopower oscillator topologies are being investigated for minimum power and input voltage operation. Advanced timing schemes are used to minimize charge reversion loss and clock driver short circuit currents for increased efficiency. A boosted output voltage around 1.5V is targeted for...

BPN596: Smart Fence and Other Wireless Sensing Applications for Critical Industrial Environments

Fabien J. Chraim
2014

Following the successful showcase of the Smart Fence technology, this project aims at using MEMS and Optical Sensors in combination with Low-Power radios to implement industrial wireless sensing applications. Using inertial sensors, valve position monitoring and machine vibration sensing are added for safeguarding both personnel and equipment. Finally, gas leak detection and localization is implemented and tested using IR combustible gas sensors. This project is concerned both with the COTS-based hardware and software behind each application.

Project end date: 02/...