Development of SOPC-Based Wireless Sensor Nodes in Farmland

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a product that unifies sensor technology, embedded computing technology, distributed information technology and wireless communication technology. At present it already is foreseen that it would have widespread application domain and high value. The main research contents of this paper include: the design of wireless sensor nodes, the method of hardware-software co-design, the reuse and design of embedded IP cores, the date acquisition, and the communication network and so on. Firstly, the performance requirement and development trend of wireless multimedia sensor nodes are analyzed. For the application of farmland information monitoring system, one wireless sensor node based on the SOPC is proposed, which designed with the Nios II processor, wireless communication chip CC2430 and some sensors. The hardware circuit diagram of each main module is given. Secondly, some IP cores in the bottom of WSN are designed and implemented, which are the important parts of In-Node Processing and In-Node Communicating. Finally, the software framework of wireless sensor nodes based on SOPC is analyzed, and the main work flow diagram of the system is provided in the paper.