The design space of wireless sensor networks

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2013

This paper presents an evaluation framework for architecture designs on wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We introduce a simple evaluation model: triangular constraint tradeoffs model (TCTM) to grasp the essence of the architecture design consideration under transient wireless media characteristic and stringent limitation on energy and computing resource of WSNs. Based on this evaluation framework, we investigate the existing architectures proposed in literature from three main competing constraint aspects, namely generality, cost, and performance. Two important concepts: performance efficiency and deployment efficiency are identified and distinguished in overall architecture efficiency. With this powerful abstract and simple model, we describe the motivations of major body of WSNs architectures proposed in current literature. We also analyse the fundamental advantage and limitations of each class of architectures from TCTM perspective. We foresee the influence of evolving technology to futuristic architecture design. We believe our efforts will serve as a reference to orient researchers and system designers in this area

2007

In the recent years, the diversification of wireless sensor network (WSN) applications has made the design space of such networks very large. This poses numerous challenges to researchers and increasingly great difficulties for designers to make decisions regarding proper technical solutions. As a result, before any design implementation, it is essential that wireless sensor networks be subject to rigorous analysis. This paper provides an original contribution to this analysis by classify-ing wireless sensor network applications with respect to their functional properties. Five distinct general classes of wireless sensor networks are thus derived: body area sensor networks, data collection networks, location-sensing networks, multimedia sensor networks and control-oriented sensor networks. For each class, we give illustrative applications, discuss in detail specific features and characteristics, and describe general architectural functionalities and some of their technical implicati...

In this thesis we present and operating system and three generations of a hardware platform designed to address the needs of wireless sensor networks. Our operating system, called TinyOS uses an event based execution model to provide support for finegrained concurrency and incorporates a highly efficient component model. TinyOS enables us to use a hardware architecture that has a single processor time shared between both application and protocol processing. We show how a virtual partitioning of computational resources not only leads to efficient resource utilization but allows for a rich interface between application and protocol processing. This rich interface, in turn, allows developers to exploit application specific communication protocols that significantly improve system performance.

2005 Systems Communications (ICW'05, ICHSN'05, ICMCS'05, SENET'05), 2005

Current wireless sensor network (WSN) architectures are based on the assumption that all sensor nodes are participating in a single global task. In many scenarios, however, it will be desirable to use a single sensor network for multiple concurrent applications. In order to enable such multipurpose WSNs efficiently, delimiting each application to its specific set of relevant nodes is one of the key issues that needs to be solved.

2005 International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing, 2005

Abstract Various architectures have been developed for wireless sensor networks. Many of them leave to the programmer important concepts as the way in which the inter-task communication and dynamic reconfigurations are addressed. In this paper we describe the characteristics of a new architecture we proposed-the data-centric architecture. This architecture offers an easy way of structuring the applications designed for wireless sensor nodes that confers them superior performances.

2006

Abstract We present a novel methodology for the design of interoperable Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The methodology is based on the principles of Platform Based Design (PBD). PBD is a meet-in-the-middle approach where the top-down refinement of a design specification meets with bottom-up characterizations of possible alternative implementations.

2006 International Symposium on Industrial Embedded Systems, 2006

Nowadays there is a trend in distributed systems research of applying software engineering and open standards in the development of large, robust and easily configurable systems, where the basic unit of replacement is the software component. Literature in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), a recently emerging technology, shows on the contrary, an abolition of these techniques as a response to the strong restrictions imposed by the hardware. Therefore, the current software created for WSN has features of the long time ago software: monolithic and platform dependent. This work studies the current state of the art in WSN and Model Driven Architecture (MDA), a standard used to drive the development of large distributed systems. The most important contribution of this paper is fusing both into an initial version of a feasible component-based middleware addressing the major challenges in WSN.

The exponential increase in the demands for the deployment of large-scale sensor networks, makes necessary the efficient development of functional applications. Nevertheless, the existence of scarce resources and the derived application complexity, impose significant issues and require high design expertise. Consequently, the probability of discovering design errors once the application is implemented is considerably high. To address these constraints there is a need for the availability of early-stage validation, performance evaluation and rapid prototyping techniques at design time. In this paper we present a novel approach for the co-design of mixed software/hardware applications for distributed sensor network systems. This approach uses BIP, a formal framework facilitating modeling, analysis and implementation of embedded real-time, heterogeneous, component-based systems. Our approach is illustrated through the modeling and deployment of a Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network (WMSN) application. We emphasize on its merits, notably validation of functional and non-functional requirements through statistical model-checking and automatic code generation for sensor network platforms.

2006

Since its introduction in the mid-1970s, the OSI Basic Reference Model (OSI-BRM) has been widely used as a foundation for communication models and standards. While many of these have modified the OSI-BRM for specific communication requirements (protocols such as ZigBee and Fieldbus-used in sensor networks), little structure or standardisation has been developed for other aspects of the hardware/software interface-for example sensing, energy management, actuation or locationing. Such processing is often implemented in the application layer of the communications stack, resulting in an unstructured, top-heavy and confusing stack. Alternatively, processing is performed off-chip or in separate unstructured software. In this paper, we propose the Unified Framework for the structured design and implementation of multiple interfaces on a sensor node. The framework creates unified stacks by connecting individual stacks (containing distinct functionality) via a shared application layer. We present the application of the framework to create a unified stack, structuring both communications and sensing. The process of extending a unified stack for implementing energy management, locationing and actuation is also discussed. The proposed framework establishes a structured platform for the formal design, specification and implementation of sensor and wireless sensor networks.

2011 IFIP 9th International Conference on Embedded and Ubiquitous Computing, 2011

Developing Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) applications is not an easy task, since it demands different expertise and knowledge. To address this problem, we propose a model-driven approach to build WSN applications. It promotes the separation of concerns between two levels of requirements involved: (i) domain experts, with no knowledge on WSN platforms, contribute to the development of applications; (ii) network experts, with no knowledge on the application domain, program nodes to meet application requirements. Our approach also promotes the reuse of software artifacts: an application model can be reused on different sensor platforms and a platform model can be reused for different WSN applications.