Elon: Enabling Efficient and Long-Term Reprogramming for Wireless Sensor Networks

We present a new mechanism called Elon for enabling efficient and long-term reprogramming in wireless sensor networks. Elon reduces the transferred code size significantly by introducing the concept of replaceable component. It avoids the cost of hardware reboot with a novel software reboot mechanism. Moreover, it significantly prolongs the reprogramming lifetime by avoiding flash writes for TelosB nodes. Experimental results show that Elon transfers up to 120-389 times less information than Deluge, and 18-42 times less information than Stream. The software reboot mechanism that Elon applies reduces the rebooting cost by 50.4%-53.87% in terms of beacon packets, and 56.83% in terms of unsynchronized nodes. In addition, Elon prolongs the reprogramming lifetime by a factor of 2.3