Enhanced Coordination in Sensor Networks through Flexible Service Provisioning

Abstract: Heterogeneous wireless sensor networks represent a challenging programming environment. Servilla addresses this by offering a new middleware framework that provides service provisioning. Using Servilla, developers can construct platform-independent applications over a dynamic set of devices with diverse computational resources and sensors. A salient feature of Servilla is its support for dynamic discovery and binding to local and remote services, which enables flexible and energy-efficient in-network collaboration among heterogeneous devices. Furthermore, Servilla provides a modular middleware architecture that can be easily tailored for devices with a wide range of resources, allowing resource-constrained devices to provide services while leveraging the capabilities of more powerful devices. Servilla has been implemented on TinyOS for two representative hardware platforms (Imote2 and TelosB) with drastically different amounts of resources. Microbenchmarks demonstrate the efficiency of Servilla's implementation, while an application case study on structural health monitoring demonstrates the efficacy of its coordination model for integrating heterogeneous devices. Notes: This is currently under submission to Coordination 2009