A flexible Wireless Sensor Network platform for implementation of diverse applications has been developed and deployed at Instituto Superior Tecnico – Technical University of Lisbon (IST-TUL). Since its initial deployment in 2007, this testbed has grown steadily, supporting new nodes, applications and experiments.

Opportunistic wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently been proposed as solutions for many remote monitoring problems. Many such problems, including environmental monitoring, involve large deployment scenarios with lower-than-average node density, as well as a long time scale and limited budgets.

The use of opportunistic communications, while increasing in popularity, is still limited, due in part to some uncertainty that still exists regarding its performance in real-world conditions. This paper tries to assess the real performance of an opportunistic routing implementation in a physical setting, by comparing it with its expected performance, determined by a simplified theoretical model.

Combining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with delay-tolerant networking (DTN) has the potential to extend their use in a multitude of previously impossible applications. However, and despite numerous proposed solutions, there is still wide debate as to how to best route messages in these networks and, more importantly, how to do it in an energy-efficient way.

A flexible Wireless Sensor Network platform for easier implementation of diverse applications has been developed and deployed at one of the Institute Superior Tecnico - Technical University of Lisbon (IST-TUL) campus.