Wisenep: A Network Processor For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are ad hoc networks comprised mainly of small sensor nodes with limited resources and one or more base stations, which are much more powerful laptopclass nodes that connect the sensor nodes to the rest of the world. The advent of this tecnology over the last decade enables large-scale deployment of such sensors. On the other hand, this poses the challenging of how the great amount of information generated by these sensor networks will be handled at the base station. In this paper, we propose a network processor architecture tailored specifically to handling information at sensor network base stations. Our approach optimize information processing by implementing tasks in hardware. We show that the novel architecture is one order of magnitude faster than an architecture based on traditional RISC processor. © 2006 IEEE.814Estrin, D., Govindan, R., Heidemann, J.S., Kumar, S., Next century challenges: Scalable coordination in sensor networks (1999) Mobile Computing and Networking, pp. 263-270. , citeseer.nj.nec.com/estrin99next.html, Seattle, WA USA, Online, AvailableAkyildiz, I.F., Su, W., Sankarasubramaniam, Y., Cayirci, E., A. Survey on Sensor Networks (2002) IEEE Communications, 40 (8), pp. 102-114Hill, J., Szewczyk, R., Woo, A., Hollar, S., Culler, D., Pister, K., System architecture directions for networked sensors (2000) Proceedings of the ninth international conference on Architectural support for programming languages and operating systems, pp. 93-104. , ACM PressMhatre, V., Rosenberg, C., Homogeneous vs. heterogeneous clustered sensor networks: A comparative study (2004) IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2004), , Paris, France, JuneZhang, H., Arora, A., Gs3: Scalable self-configuration and self-healing in wireless sensor networks (2003) Comput. Networks, 43 (4), pp. 459-480Chu, M., Mitter, S.K., Zhao, F., An information architecture for distributed inference on ad hoc sensor networks (2003) Forty-first Annual Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, , Monticello, USA, octGanesan, D., Estrin, D., Heidemann, J., Dimensions: Why do we need a new data handling architecture for sensor networks? (2003) SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev, 33 (1), pp. 143-148Patterson, D., Hennessy, J., (2003) Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach, , 3rd ed. Prentice HallStallings, W., (1996) Computer Organization and Architecture: Designing for Performance, , 4th ed. Prentice HallComer, D.E., (2003) Network Systems Design using Network Processors, , Prentice HallGonzalez, R.C., Woods, R.E., (1992) Digital Image Processing, , Addison-Wesle