First mediumscale experiments and fieldtrials have reported that it is increasingly hard to design, develop, deploy, test and validate systems consisting of more than a handfull of nodes, especially when situated in a realworld environment. Prototypical applications are scarce, seldomly consisting of more than a few tens to a hundred nodes. Setting up large, heterogeneous, interactive and functional systems as forecast in the visions is no small task; currently more an art than a systematic engineering effort. Coordinated methods and tools for the design and deployment of wireless networked embedded systems are missing today.

With this work, we to contribute to the design and development of wireless networked embedded systems. The specific contributions are presented and discussed in the context of a vertical slice of the design space concerned and the relevant questions encountered:

• Functional and qualitative requirements of a location management service for wireless sensor networks based on measurements and simulation have been developed. We present one of the earliest algorithms for the distributed computation of node location.

• A novel platform for fastprototyping of wireless sensor networks has been developed. This platform has successfully served numerous researchers, among ourselves, as an underlying infrastructure for experimentation and education.

• The BTnode platform has been used to develop multihop networks and topology control mechanisms for Bluetooth scatternets. To our knowledge the experiments presented are the largest connected Bluetooth scatternets reported to date.

• The concept of a deploymentsupport network as a powerful tool for the development, deployment, test and validation of wireless sensor networks is presented in conjunction with experimental evidence on the feasibility of the approach.