Goals

As one of the building blocks for the Internet of Things (IoT), low-power wireless networking continues being an active research area, in which testbeds remain indispensable instruments for experimentally evaluating novel communication schemes. With the evolution of the field, testbeds are increasingly expected to match envisioned deployment conditions of such solutions, notably in terms of scale. However, modern large-scale experimental testbeds are extremely scarce, mainly because they are believed to be simply too intricate and expensive.

We argue that this belief is no longer justified by introducting 1KT, our new smart-building IoT testbed for solutions utilizing IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy. It comprises 1000 experimental devices deployed directly in human spaces of 168 rooms on all 5 floors of a sizable building. At the same time, its cost is relatively low considering the scale, proving that large-scale testbeds—if designed properly—can be affordable for many research groups, which we hope will facilitate evaluating novel low-power wireless networking solutions at scale and inspire development of new testbeds in a range of interesting settings.

Citing

Please use the following BibTex entry to cite us: 

@inproceedings{Banaszek:1KT:MSWiM2021,
    author = {Banaszek, Mateusz and Dubiel, Wojciech and \L{}ysiak, Jacek and D\k{e}bski, Maciej and Kisiel, Maciej and \L{}azarczyk, Dawid and G\l{}ogowska, Ewa and Gumienny, Przemys\l{}aw and Si\l{}uszyk, Cezary and Cio\l{}kosz, Piotr and Paszkowska, Agnieszka and R\"{u}b, Inga and Matraszek, Maciej and Aceda\'{n}ski, Szymon and Horban, Przemys\l{}aw and Iwanicki, Konrad},
    title = {{1KT}: {A} Low-Cost 1000-Node Low-Power Wireless {IoT} Testbed},
    booktitle = {Proceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems},
    series = {MSWiM '21},
    year = {2021},
    publisher = {ACM},
    doi = {10.1145/3479239.3485708},
    location = {Alicante, Spain},
    pages = {109--113},
}

or the following ACM Reference Text:

Mateusz Banaszek, Wojciech Dubiel, Jacek Łysiak, Maciej Dębski, Maciej Kisiel, Dawid Łazarczyk, Ewa Głogowska, Przemysław Gumienny, Cezary Siłuszyk, Piotr Ciołkosz, Agnieszka Paszkowska, Inga Rüb, Maciej Matraszek, Szymon Acedański, Przemysław Horban, Konrad Iwanicki. 2021. 1KT: A Low-Cost 1000-Node Low-Power Wireless IoT Testbed. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems (MSWiM ’21), November 22–26, 2021, Alicante, Spain. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3479239.3485708

See the paper

Briefly about 1KT

A photo of CherryMote. It is a small white box with Ethernet ports, a USB port, LEDs and a power supply port in the front panel.

The building blocks of 1KT are CherryMotes, which consist of Experimental Device coupled 1-1 with Supervising Device. These two are connected by a main PCB and are enclosed in a white modern case. The main PCB hosts also a power meter, which can be queried in real time by both Supervising Device and Experimental Device itself.

CherryMote is built from off-the-shelf components. Texas Instruments CC2650EM-7ID Reference Design is directly employed as Experimental Device. Olimex RT5350F-OLinuXino acts, in turn, as Supervising Device. Only the main PCB and the front panel cutout are tailor-made and their sources may be found in the download section.

A photo of the inside of CherryMote. There are three PCB: Experimental Device and Supervising Device are mounted on the main PCB. The main PCB hosts also Ethernet ports, a USB port, LEDs, and a power supply port.

950 CherryMotes are deployed throughout a sizable five-story building of Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics, and Mechanics of University of Warsaw. The devices are deployed directly in human spaces (e.g., under windowsills, behind desks, on file cabinets) of 168 rooms of virtually all types, including offices, computer labs, lecture halls, and shared areas, following an arrangement of each room.

A visualization of CherryMotes locations within the building. Inside an outline of the faculty building, positions of the devices are marked with dots.

The remaining 50 CherryMotes are dedicated to development, preliminary evaluation, small-scale experimentation, and maintenance.

More information can be found in our paper presenting 1KT.

Publications

The following scientific publications reference 1KT:

  1. Mateusz Banaszek, Wojciech Dubiel, Jacek Łysiak, Maciej Dębski, Maciej Kisiel, Dawid Łazarczyk, Ewa Głogowska, Przemysław Gumienny, Cezary Siłuszyk, Piotr Ciołkosz, Agnieszka Paszkowska, Inga Rüb, Maciej Matraszek, Szymon Acedański, Przemysław Horban, and Konrad Iwanicki: “1KT: A Low-Cost 1000-Node Low-Power Wireless IoT Testbed,” In MSWiM 2021: Proceedings of the 24th ACM International Conference on Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Wireless and Mobile Systems, Alicante, Spain. November 2021, 5 pages. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3479239.3485708. [Plots Sources] [Conference Slides]
  2. Mateusz Banaszek, Inga Rüb, Maciej Dębski, Agnieszka Paszkowska, Maciej Kisiel, Dawid Łazarczyk, Ewa Głogowska, Przemysław Gumienny, Cezary Siłuszyk, Piotr Ciołkosz, Jacek Łysiak, Wojciech Dubiel, Szymon Acedański, Przemysław Horban, and Konrad Iwanicki: “Lessons from Communication Problems that Nearly Jeopardized Development of Hardware-Software Support for a 1000-Device IoT Testbed,” In EWSN 2020: Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, FAILSAFE Workshop, Lyon, France. February 2020, pp. 259–264. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3400306.3400357. [Conference Slides]

A complete list of the project leader's publications can in turn be found here.

People

Research team

Currently, the following people are involved in the management of the testbed:

The following people were in turn involved during developement of 1KT:

  • Szymon Acedański [core member]
  • Piotr Ciołkosz [student member]
  • Maciej Dębski [student member]
  • Wojciech Dubiel [student member]
  • Ewa Głogowska [student member]
  • Przemysław Gumienny [student member]
  • Przemysław Horban [core member]
  • Maciej Kisiel [student member]
  • Małgorzata Koślacz [administrative assistant]
  • Dawid Łazarczyk [student member]
  • Jacek Łysiak [student member]
  • Anna Modzelewska [administrative assistant]
  • Marlena Nowińska [administrative assistant]
  • Agnieszka Paszkowska [student member]
  • Cezary Siłuszyk [student member]