High-level frameworks for the development of wireless sensor network applications

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are emerging as powerful platforms for distributed embedded computing supporting a variety of high-impact appli- cations. A WSN is a group of small devices (nodes) capable to sample the real world through sensors, actuate commands through actuators, elaborate data on the node, and send messages to other nodes through radio communi- cation. However, programming WSN applications is a complex task that re- quires suitable paradigms and technologies capable of supporting the speci c characteristics of such networks which uniquely integrate distributed sensing, computation and communication. This thesis aims at providing new paradigms to support the development of WSN applications through both a domain-speci c and a general-purpose approach. In particular, this thesis provides three main contributions. The rst is related to the analysis, design and realization of a domain-speci c frame- work for heterogeneous WSNs for exible and e cient distributed sensing and actuation in buildings called Building Management Framework (BMF). BMF provides fast WSN recon guration, in-node processing algorithms, multi-hop networks, and multi-platform support, a programming abstraction to dynami- cally catch the morphology of buildings, actuators support, and an extensible human computer interface. The second contribution refers to the analysis, design and realization of a general-purpose mobile agent system for WSN, namely MAPS (Multi Agent Platform for SunSPOT). MAPS allows an e ec- tive Java-based development of agents and agent-based applications for WSNs by integrating agent oriented, event-driven and state-based programming pa- radigms. Finally, the third contribution regards the analysis, design and re- alization of a domain-speci c framework for rapid prototyping of platform independent Wireless Body Sensor Network (WBSN) applications, namely SPINE2 (signal processing in-node environment version 2). SPINE2 aims at supporting the development of WSN applications raising the level of the used programming abstractions by providing a task-oriented programming model.