In this paper, the implementation of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for environmental monitoring (EM) is presented. It includes the design, implementation and experimental characterization of a multi-sector base station (BS) antenna composed of several microstrip Quasi-Yagi elements and the implementation and experimental characterization of a reduced form factor antenna for the sensor nodes (SN). Subsequently, it reports the implementation of a WSN based on Lopy4 transceivers, using the developed BS and SN antennas. Finally, experimental results obtained on the field to evaluate the performance of the network in terms of maximum coverage distance and coverage area are presented. According to the field tests, the connectivity between the sensor nodes and the developed WSN base station is confirmed at distances above 3.5 km and for all the antenna sectors of the multi-sector BS attaining a 360° of field of view.
Keywords: WSN; antenna; base station; differential; environmental; microstrip; monitoring; sensor node.