A prototype wireless sensor node has been developed as part of WINSOC project. SELEX has already sent approximately 15 nodes to AMRITA and CCSS. These nodes will be integrated, deployed, tested and verified in both landslide detection scenario and forest fire scenario.

The Wireless Node is composed of three principal entities:
a Wireless Motherboard, an I/O board, and a Power Supply Package.
The Wireless Motherboard’s task is basically the handling of the communication aspects. It manages the transmissions of the packets over the air and receptions of the ones transmitted by other nodes. The board is equipped by a microcontroller LPC2138 and a single chip radio transceiver Chipcon CC1100.
The I/O board makes available outward (for the acquisition from the sensor/s) the serial interfaces RS-232 and RS-485 and provides a line driving of the signals coming from the two external interfaces.
The Power Supply Package contains the batteries; the Nickel-Metal Hybrid batteries (NiMH) are a good choice for power supply.
The node satisfies different environmental requirements (temperature, humidity, salty fog, rain, sand and dust; shock, fall and vibrations; electro-magnetic emissions) as the ones specified in many standards defined by ETSI, IEC and others.

The node interacts with sensors by means of an external board (called Expansion Board) whose task is to adapt different sensors’ outputs to the RS485 serial bus of the Winsoc Node.
A subset of nodes have been developed with miniaturized antennas instead of dipole ones.
Selex Communications has been responsible for the development of nodes, both from HW and SW point of view.
CCSS has developed the expansions boards and the communication protocol between node and the board.
Cea-Leti has developed the miniaturized antennas.