Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-167). Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2009. / Title from title screen (site viewed March 2, 2010). PDF text: ix, 110 p. : ill. (chiefly col.) ; 3 Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3386564. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm and microfiche formats.

published_or_final_version / Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Nowadays more and more sensors are being incorporated into trucks. All of these sensors are interfaced with the ECU’s using wires. This increases the cost and complexity of installing the sensors. One alternative is to make the connection wireless. Therefore, AB Volvo technologies are researching on how to develop such a system. Currently it is at the initial stages. This thesis is a small part of this research.The main aim of this thesis is to identify the best gateway position for such a wireless sensor network at the chassis of the truck. To achieve this, a test platform was built, tests were performed and empirical link analysis was done. The platform makes use of an open source operating system called Contiki OS and uses IEEE 802.15.4 compliant transceivers. All the tests were conducted on a stationary truck. Moreover, all the tests conducted had 3 variables and they are gateway position, transmission power and truck mode.From the results obtained it was found that 2 gateway positions out of the total 3 tested are equally good. Furthermore, it was found that truck modes didn’t have any impact on the wireless link.

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Over-the-air reprogramming is an important aspect of managing large wireless sensor networks. However, reprogramming deployed sensor networks poses significant challenges due to the energy, processing power and memory limitation of sensor nodes. For improved energy efficiency, a reprogramming mechanism should use less transmission and flash writing overhead. Past research has proposed different mechanisms for reprogramming deployed sensor networks. However, all of these mechanisms produce large patches if software modifications involve changing program layouts and shifting global variables. In addition, existing mechanisms use large amounts of external flash and rewrite entire internal flash. In this thesis, we present a differential reprogramming mechanism called QDiff that mitigates the effects of program layout modifications and retains maximum similarity between old and new software using a clone detection mechanism. Moreover, QDiff organizes the global variables in a novel way that eliminates the effect of variable shifting. Our experiments show that QDiff requires near-zero external flash, and significantly lower internal flash rewriting and transmission overhead than leading existing differential reprogramming mechanisms. / Thesis (Master, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2011-11-29 14:11:44.138