PROTON Testbed

PROTON Testbed is a next-generation wireless experimentation and prototyping platform consisting of 2,000 energy-autonomous wireless nodes engineered for large-scale Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), edge computing, and wireless networking research. Designed for Industry 5.0, PROTON enables fully programmable, over-the-air experimentation with support for Bluetooth LE, Bluetooth Mesh, Zigbee, Thread, NFC, and Wi-Fi 6, leveraging dual-core SoCs and advanced PV-powered energy systems.

PROTON Testbed is housed in a modular, expandable indoor and outdoor infrastructure at Arizona State University, and offers unmatched flexibility to configure heterogeneous wireless networks, from small mesh clusters to metropolitan-scale distributed sensor grids. PROTON testbed is an ideal environment for testing edge intelligence, dynamic spectrum sharing, wireless backhaul, and ultra-low power communication protocols.

Industry Collaboration

PROTON is purpose-built to support strategic partnerships across critical infrastructure, industrial automation, and wireless innovation sectors. Key areas of collaboration include:

Energy & Utilities: Grid telemetry, DER monitoring, and substation wireless upgrades

Oil & Gas: Harsh-environment sensing and autonomous pipeline diagnostics

Telecom & 5G: Private LTE/5G prototyping, edge mesh optimization

Manufacturing & Industry 4.0/5.0: Autonomous production line monitoring, predictive fault detection

Renewables: Solar farm optimization, wireless DNI-based sensor orchestration

Defense & Aerospace: Battlefield IoT, secure unmanned wireless systems

Agriculture: Smart irrigation, crop health monitoring via solar mesh nodes

PROTON Nodes

EnGenius APs

Cambium APs

PROTON Nodes

Each PROTON node integrates:

Nordic nRF5340 SoC: Dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 (128 MHz & 64 MHz) with 1.25 MB Flash, 576 KB RAM, and advanced crypto support.
Nordic nRF7002 Companion IC: Fully compliant with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), supporting up to 86 Mbps PHY throughput, OFDMA uplink/downlink, and SoftAP modes.
Energy Harvesting Subsystem: 0.3 W photovoltaic (PV) panel charging a 600 mAh LiFePO₄ battery; supports indoor (LED) and outdoor (solar) energy harvesting with intelligent low-power management.
Flash Storage: Integrated MXIC MC 25R6435F 64 Mb NOR flash for local data buffering.
FOTA Support: Full device firmware update over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for large-scale reprogramming without physical access.

The nodes are equipped with QSPI, SPI, USB, and advanced security modules, offering robust hardware interfaces and cryptographic primitives for secure over-the-air testing.

Network Capabilities

Configurable Multi-Protocol Networks: Deploy custom topologies using BLE Mesh, Zigbee, Thread, or Wi-Fi 6, with routing paths dynamically optimized using intermediate Access Points (APs).
Edge-aware Backhaul Expansion: Supports EnGenius and Cambium Wi-Fi 6 APs to construct adaptive, hierarchical communication backbones.
Self-Sustained Deployment: Nodes operate autonomously with PV + battery systems and failover sleep modes ensure resilience during extended power shortages.
Data Logging & Cloud Integration: Real-time data streamed to centralized servers or cloud platforms (e.g., AWS) for processing, visualization, and remote experiment control.

Collaborators interested in datasets and additional information regarding the capabilities of PROTON Testbed are encouraged to contact Prof. Eirini Eleni Tsiropoulou (eirini@asu.edu)

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