Lessons Learned from the Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks

Many theoretical works focus on maximizing the lifetime of a measurement-gathering sensor networks by researching different aspects of energy conservation or details of self-organizing network algorithms. In our practical deployment of such a network we learned that software and hardware reliability, as well as anticipation of worst-case scenarios, are the equally important factors for successful experiments. We describe our experiences with implementing a WSN for long-time unattended operation in a greenhouse data-collecting application.