Testing of a routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks with applications to planetary exploration

The idea of sending a man to the Moon has recently regained strength and now almost all agency roadmaps have manned missions as an important goal. For this purpose, it is necessary to continuously monitor the environment on the planetary surface to achieve a clear understanding of its conditions. This paper presents the results of the FP7 European project SWIPE (Space Wireless sensor networks for Planetary Exploration) [1], which aims to apply Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to monitoring of interplanetary environments, focusing on the exploration of the Moon. Moreover, the project aims at increasing our scientific knowledge of the Moon environment, such as swirls and potential dust levitation. It is proposed that hundreds of miniaturised sensor nodes, which are deployed on the lunar surface, cooperate to monitor physical and environmental conditions. These sensor nodes are capable of creating their own ad-hoc network and establishing a communication link with an orbiting spacecraft to deliver data to Earth. The SWIPE sensor nodes and network are highly reconfigurable, which makes them robust against the harsh environment conditions on the Moon surface. Moreover, since many WSN nodes are needed, it is essential that they are low mass and low power devices. This requires that the usage of the limited energy is optimized through the design of energy efficient hardware, software and radio equipment, especially when solar energy cannot be used (i.e., during lunar nights). The paper presents the main achievements of the SWIPE project in terms of innovative communication algorithms, focused on routing. The test design and implementation through the Netkit software is discussed in detail, in order to show the effectiveness of the proposed solution