  Experimentation is important when designing communication protocols for
Wireless Sensor Networks. Lower-layers have a major impact on upper-layer
performance, and the complexity of the phenomena can not be entirely captured
by analysis or simulation. In this report, we go through the complete process,
from designing an energy-efficient self-organizing communication architecture
(MAC, routing and application layers) to real-life experimentation roll-outs.
The presented communication architecture includes a MAC protocol which avoids
building and maintaining neighborhood tables, and a geographically-inspired
routing protocol over virtual coordinates. The application consists of a mobile
sink interrogating a wireless sensor network based on the requests issued by a
disconnected base station. After the design process of this architecture, we
verify it functions correctly by simulation, and we perform a temporal
verification. This study is needed to calculate the maximum speed the mobile
sink can take. We detail the implementation, and the results of the off-site
experimentation (energy consumption at PHY layer, collision probability at MAC
layer, and routing). Finally, we report on the real-world deployment where we
have mounted the mobile sink node on a radio-controlled airplane.
