Telos: enabling ultra-low power wireless research

Abstract — We present Telos, an ultra low power wireless sensor module (“mote”) for research and experimentation. Telos is the latest in a line of motes developed by UC Berkeley to enable wireless sensor network (WSN) research. It is a new mote design built from scratch based on expe-riences with previous mote generations. Telos ’ new design consists of three major goals to enable experimentation: minimal power consumption, easy to use, and increased software and hardware robustness. We discuss how hardware components are selected and integrated in order to achieve these goals. Using a Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller, Chipcon IEEE 802.15.4-compliant radio, and USB, Telos ’ power profile is almost…