An integrated chassis manager card platform featuring multiple sensor modules

Abstract

The gradually growing demand for experimentation of protocols designed for wireless networks in real environments has resulted in the development of experimental network facilities (testbeds). Most currently deployed testbeds have been designed so as to offer services to experimenters that lie within the testbed's premises, thus limiting the accessibility to external users. The requirement for multi-user access of network resources has led several large-scale testbeds to provide remote access services to certified experimenters. However, management and maintenance of large-scale remotely accessible testbeds is a rather challenging task that requires proper hardware, as well as software custom-built tools. In order to provide for remote switching of testbed nodes, NITOS has developed a new chassis manager (CM) card and also a custom framework that allows for monitoring and controlling of the nodes' operational mode. In addition, NITOS CM card provides for gathering of various types of sensor measurements, through the attached temperature, humidity and light intensity sensor modules. Another innovative characteristic of the proposed card is that it provides the experimenters with the ability to monitor the energy consumption of each testbed node, which is rather important for experimentation with power optimization schemes. In this demo, we will present the various functionalities of the NITOS CM card and the developed control framework that accompanies it. © 2012 ICST Institute for Computer Science, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.