International Conference on Information Technology Systems and Innovation (ICITSI) 2014

Bandung-Bali, 24-27 November 2014

ISBN: 978-1-4799-6526-7

Flexible and Reconfigurable System on Chip

for Wireless Sensor Network
A Sumarudin
Trio Adiono Willy Permana Putra
Department of Informatics
Electrical Engineering Department of Informatics
Politeknik Negeri Indramayu Jalan
Institute Teknologi Bandung Politeknik Negeri Indramayu Jalan
Lohbener lama no 8 Lohbener
Jalan Ganesha 10, Bandung, Lohbener lama no 8 Lohbener
Indramayu, west Java, Indonesia
Indonesia Indramayu, west Java, Indonesia
shumaru@polindra.ac.id
tadiono@paume.itb.ac.id willy@polindra.ac.id
asumarudin@gmail.com
putranunuk@gmail.com

Abstract— This paper proposed a reconfigurable and the system with many types of external devices and also can
flexible SoC architecture for various applications of create various program applications. Proposed system also
wireless sensor network (WSN). The hardware-software support many interface such as I2C, SPI, USART, etc. The
system reconfiguration can be easy done because the system has been successfully implemented with
systems utilize FPGA based SoC as a platform. The system communication device and sensors with secure data transfer to
also supports various network topologies and interfaces. the gateway. The system also has been verified by monitoring
The supported interface consists of I2C, SPI, USART, etc. application for PH and temperature.
The main processing system of SoC is based on ARM v7
processor that has high computing capability. The system
utilizes Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as operating system. As II. SYSTEM ON CHIP ARCHITECTURE
consequences, we can easily interface the system with
many external devices and create various program 1. The System Architecture
applications, such as monitoring system, sensor data
warehouse, etc. The system has been successfully The proposed system architecture is illustrated on Fig 1. The
implemented with communication interface and PH, SoC system is implemented using FPGA Zynq that consists of
temperature, and humidity sensors. The system also has dual core ARM cortex v7. The FPGA board uses microzed.
been verified using designed monitoring application for
PH, temperature and humidity data that are transferred
Soil Humadity
into gateway.
Soil PH sensor SoC
Keywords—Wireless sensor network, SoC, flexible, WIFI
ZYNQ
configurable, zynq
Temperature

I. INTRODUCTION Fig 1. The system architecture

The proposed reconfigurable and flexible SoC architecture can
be used for various wireless sensor network applications such
as agriculture monitoring system, bridge monitoring system,
smart city etc. The system supports various network
topologies such as bus, star and mesh topology. The system is
able to work for mobile network with very mobility node. The
reconfigurable of hardware and software are easily done
because the system utilizes FPGA as a platform. We utilize
Xilinx (R) Zynq 700 as programmable SoC. The SoC is based
on dual core ARM v7 processor that has high computing
capability for many different applications. The system utilizes
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS as OS. Therefore we can easily interface
For communication to the smartphone, the system use WiFi
module. The SoC system can be interfaced with many
sensors. In the proposed system have temperature, PH and
humidity sensors as input. The connection of SoC to the
sensors is done through microcontrol using I2C protocol, ADC
etc. The I2C interface makes the system easy to be equipped
with other sensors in the future. The connection between
sensors and microcontroller is illustrated in Fig 2.

978-1-4799-6527-4/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE

230
 Fig 4. The monitoring system architecture

The system is applied for monitoring PH, temperature, gas,

Fig 2. The connection of sensors through microcontroller
The connection of SHT 11 sensors is done using I2C protocol.
For the PH meter, we connect it through 10bits ADC. It is
very easy for configuration and configurable with many sensor
that have many protocol connection. In order to keep the
power consumption low, we utilize low power VDD that is
3.3V and 40 mA consumption with 8 Mhz clock.
etc. The system has a gateway that is connected to Cloud
server on the internet. Each node is connected with WiFi and
has an ad-hoc network configuration. The client can be
connected with GPRS, LTE, WIMAX or etc. It enables many
possible applications for data sensor warehouse which can be
used for example intelligent agriculture sensor network and
actuator.
III. THE DESIGN IMPLEMENTATION
The system development step is illustrated in following
flowchart.

2. The HLS architecture

The architecture of HLS is described in Fig. 3.

I/O
Neon / fpu engine
Peripherals
Cortex A9
USB 0 MMU MPCore
CPU
UART I
Cache I Cache D
I2C I
L2 Cache
ENET 0
Central
Interconnect
Clock
Generation memory
DDR 3

Fig 3. The HLS architecture

On HLS architecture, the system utilizes ARM v7 cortex A9
MPcore CPU. The system has cache memory and external
memory consist of 1 Gb DDR3 memory. For the connection
with sensors, the system has I2C interface that is directly
connected with microcontroller system.
3. The monitoring system block diagram
The system is applied for monitoring of PH, temperature,
humidity, etc. as can be seen on Fig. 4.
Fig 5. The System Development Flowchart
Based on Fig. 5, the system development consists of 6
development steps:
1. The configuration of Zynq FPGA with microzed
In this step, the Zynq Fpga configuration file is generated
for SoC with Linux OS [14].
2. Xillinux Installation on Zynq FPGA
Second step, it installing linux os base on xillinux os as
ubuntu 12.04 with kernel linux 3.12.0. for step
configuration can read on documentation [15].
3. Setting WiFi driver
For communication between SoC, the system use Wifi
connection with tp-link tl wn722N with high gain and
long distance. Driver with htc-9271.fw and installing on
~/lib/firmware. For verification can be check with
#iwconfig. For search the wifi active use iwlist wlan0
scanning.

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 IV. THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
The software development has several layers. We use layer for
each application as show on Fig. 7.

USB device Xillinux OS

Kernel 3.12
ENET
Processing System
Fig 6. Wi-Fi driver Installation Programmable Logic
I2C
4. Configuring ad-hoc connection
communication
For the communication with other nodes, the systems
utilize ad-hoc network configuration. Its connection
possible for many sensors mote connection and with bus Fig 7. Software Development
and mesh topology. Each mote can be repeater for
connection with gateway. The development of application software utilizes
Connection ad-hoc, we modify with bash sell for easy based on Linux, its xilinux 1.3 equal with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
configure on mote. Xilinux configuration and the source can be read from the
5. Two nodes test connection documentations of xilibus [15]. The configuration of USB and
The testing mote utilizes txt file. If one mote send data a Ethernet utilize processing system (PS) on system on module
gateway with WiFi connection and ad hoc network. (SOM). The communication with sensor utilizes programmable
6. Sensor integration logic (PL) with adding IP core i2c communication on Zynq.

The sensors are connected with low power Adding the processing system for I2C connection with
microcontroller. The system has both sensor and Zynqc. It sensor can show in following figure.
utilizes I2C connection interface. Because many sensors
are utilize different protocol. With microcontroller, it
become possible to add sensor with easy connection and
configuration.
The specification of proposed system are: IEEE
802.11b/g/n WIFI
1. Interoperability with other WiFi devices
2. Processor 33.333 MHz SoC ARM Cortex A9 MPcore
2 core (32KB I-chace, 32 KB D-Chace, AMBA Bus,
FPU)
3. Integrated with I2C communication or UART for
communication with Sensor module
4. Integrated Humidity, Temperature, PH and Gas
Nitrogen
5. Extended sensor device with one device connection
for data 3acquisition
6. Battery rechargeable
7. Hardware and software link-layer encryption and
authentication Fig 8. Adding I2C communication module
8. Programming and data collection via USB or remote
9. Configurable with other GPIO, other sensor or 'DWD WUDQVIHU RI PRWH WR JDWH ZD\ LV LPSOHPHQWHG XVLQJ DG
actuator for agriculture KRFFRQQHFWLRQ7KHVRIWZDUHIRUFRQQHFWLRQZLWKJDWHZD\LV
10. SMA antenna connector, it’s possible for long range FUHDWHG ZLWK EDVK VHOO SURJUDPLQJ 7KH VHQVRU GDWD LV VHQW
connection SHULRGLFDOO\
11. Xillibyus support with linux kernel 3.12.0 : mesh
networking and communication implementation with
routing protocol with AODV

232
 The connection testing is successful with best
connection and 100% connection success.

Fig 9. Bash shell programing for data sent

7KH VHQVRU GDWD IURP PLFURFRQWUROOHU DUH VHQW WR 6R& DQG
WKHQ WUDQVIHUUHG WR D JDWHZD\ DQG VWRUHG DV W[W ILOH 7KH
LOOXVWUDWLRQ RI PRWH FRQQHFWLRQ ZLWK JDWHZD\ LV VKRZ RQ )LJ

Fig 13. The icmp test connection

The data is sent with 0% packet loss and round-trip-

time (rtt) data icmp connection can show on Table 1.

Table 1. rtt icmp packet

rtt min rtt average rtt max rtt
deviation
Fig 10. Connection mote with gateway 0.258mS 0.0886 mS 13.677 mS 2.055 mS

The mote implementation can show on Fig. 11. 2. The data sensor sent to gateway
The sensor data of temperature, humidity, and PH
meter are periodically sent with ssh. Thre result is
shown on Fig. 14.

Fig 14. The sensor data transfer to gateway

Fig 11. The Mote WSN Implementation
V. TESTING
3. The communication between client to gateway
The connection testing between mote and gateway utilize
internet control message protocol (icmp) packet. In the
first step connection, the mote is set with an ad-hoc static
IP. Fig. 12 shows the configuration testing connection
with gateway.
VI. CONCLUSION
The flexibility and reconfigurability SoC has been designed
and implemented for PH, temperature, and humidity
monitoring system. The implementation has proof that
proposed SoC architecture can be easily reconfigure and
interfaced with many sensors. That monitoring software
application also has been easily develop using high level
programming, such as bash shell programing, and Ubuntu
Linux 12.04 LTS as operating system. The verification has
been worked to send monitoring data do gateway and real-
time.

REFERENCES
Fig 12. The ad-hoc connection configuration on mote

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