Bluetooth Zigbee bridge for mobile phone based wireless sensor network gateways

Abstract

The Wireless Sensor Network has been expanding over recent years, now growing in different applications, both commercial (automation, industry, medicine) and military. WSNs are composed of independent sensors nodes, and distributed evenly, able to interact with their environment, which means they can get information depending on their use or application. Usually the function has focused on monitoring physical conditions or the environment. Nodes of sensors networks have no predetermined structure; mesh networks are generally used, allowing access through different routes, giving alternative routes between origin and destination in case of obstruction. Imagine a network of sensor nodes interacting with their environment to get data from each sensor node. To obtain this information from the sensors to the 'real world', they need to incorporate a gateway that allows or provides connectivity between the network of wireless sensors and the host application through an interface radio properly. This device will get the data available at each sensor independently. In general, these technologies are based on the Zigbee standard (IEEE 802.15.4), and are optimized to transfer data at lower speeds with low power consumption and adding performance. Today virtually all mobile phone handsets incorporate Bluetooth technology for data transfer, as the most common hands free link. So, the idea of this project is to design a gateway able to provide access to users from the mobile terminal through Bluetooth technology to the network of sensors and incorporating the radio-based technology Zigbee needs to communicate with nodes in the sensor network; being able to independently obtain data from each of them and provide such data through Bluetooth to a mobile phone terminal. The design will also be provided to develop the necessary drivers to work correctly with the network of sensors. This device finally incorporates Bluetooth technology, so it has developed as well as the drivers that enable the Bluetooth module to connect to any device and transfer data, in turn incorporating the radio interface based on Zigbee. For us the platform used is Sunspot, based on Java programming.