- Author:
- Jason Lester Hill,
- Adviser:
- David E. Culler
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 fine-grained 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.
The hardware platforms we develop are used to validate a generalized architecture that is technology independent. Our general architecture contains a single central controller that performs both application and protocol-level processing. For flexibility, this controller is directly connected to the RF transceiver. For efficiency, the controller is supported by a collection of hardware accelerators that provide basic communication primitives that can be flexibility composed into application specific protocols.
The three hardware platforms we present are instances of this general architecture with varying degrees of hardware sophistication. The Rene platform serves as a baseline and does not contain any hardware accelerators. It allows us to develop the TinyOS operating system concepts and refine its concurrency mechanisms. The Mica node incorporates hardware accelerators that improve communication rates and synchronization accuracy within the constraints of current microcontrollers. As an approximation of our general architecture, we use Mica to validate the underlying architectural principles. The Mica platform has become the foundation for hundreds of wireless sensor network research efforts around the world. It has been sold to more than 250 organizations.
Spec is the most advanced node presented and represents the full realization of our general architecture. It is a 2.5 mm x 2.5 mm CMOS chip that includes processing, storage, wireless communications and hardware accelerators. We show how the careful selection of the correct accelerators can lead to orders-of-magnitude improvements in efficiency without sacrificing flexibility. In addition to performing a theoretical analysis on the strengths of our architecture, we demonstrate its capabilities through a collection of real-world application deployments.
Cited By
- Malavolta I, Mostarda L, Muccini H, Ever E, Doddapaneni K and Gemikonakli O (2019). A4WSN, Software and Systems Modeling (SoSyM), 18:4, (2633-2653), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2019.
Kang J, Kim J, Yeo D, Hyun J, Jo K, Choi T, Jung P, Kim H, Lee S and Kim S Modular approach in sensor board design Proceedings of the 10th ACM Conference on Embedded Network Sensor Systems, (365-366)- Doddapaneni K, Ever E, Gemikonakli O, Malavolta I, Mostarda L and Muccini H A model-driven engineering framework for architecting and analysing wireless sensor networks Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Software Engineering for Sensor Network Applications, (1-7)
- Dokania R, Wang X, Dorta-Quinones C, Godycki W, Tallur S and Apsel A A 6μw, 100kbps, 3-5ghz, UWB impulse radio transmitter Proceedings of the 16th ACM/IEEE international symposium on Low power electronics and design, (91-94)
- Kwon Y, Mechitov K, Sundresh S, Kim W and Agha G (2010). Resilient localization for sensor networks in outdoor environments, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN), 7:1, (1-30), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2010.
- Schmid T, Shea R, Srivastava M and Dutta P Disentangling wireless sensing from mesh networking Proceedings of the 6th Workshop on Hot Topics in Embedded Networked Sensors, (1-5)
- Raval R, Fernandez C and Bleakley C (2010). Low-power TinyOS tuned processor platform for wireless sensor network motes, ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, 15:3, (1-17), Online publication date: 1-May-2010.
- Wu J, Yuan S, Ji S, Zhou G, Wang Y and Wang Z (2010). Multi-agent system design and evaluation for collaborative wireless sensor network in large structure health monitoring, Expert Systems with Applications: An International Journal, 37:3, (2028-2036), Online publication date: 1-Mar-2010.
- Hafez A, Dessouky M and Ragai H (2009). Design of a low-power ZigBee receiver front-end for wireless sensors, Microelectronics Journal, 40:11, (1561-1568), Online publication date: 1-Nov-2009.
- Zhai B, Pant S, Nazhandali L, Hanson S, Olson J, Reeves A, Minuth M, Helfand R, Austin T, Sylvester D and Blaauw D (2009). Energy-efficient subthreshold processor design, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, 17:8, (1127-1137), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2009.
- Strozek L and Brooks D (2009). Energy- and area-efficient architectures through application clustering and architectural heterogeneity, ACM Transactions on Architecture and Code Optimization, 6:1, (1-31), Online publication date: 30-Mar-2009.
- Dutta P, Taneja J, Jeong J, Jiang X and Culler D A building block approach to sensornet systems Proceedings of the 6th ACM conference on Embedded network sensor systems, (267-280)
- Beck N and Johnson I Shaping TinyOS to deal with evolving device architectures Proceedings of the 4th workshop on Embedded networked sensors, (83-87)
- Al-Mutairi M and Habib S Coverage restoration of wireless sensor networks through the usage of decision trees Proceedings of the Fourth IASTED Asian Conference on Communication Systems and Networks, (126-130)
- Strozek L and Brooks D Efficient architectures through application clustering and architectural heterogeneity Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Compilers, architecture and synthesis for embedded systems, (190-200)
- Prinsloo J, Schulz C, Kourie D, Theunissen W, Strauss T, Van Den Heever R and Grobbelaar S A service oriented architecture for wireless sensor and actor network applications Proceedings of the 2006 annual research conference of the South African institute of computer scientists and information technologists on IT research in developing countries, (145-154)
- Muldoon C, O'Hare G and O'Grady M Managing resources in constrained environments with autonomous agents Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Engineering societies in the agents world VII, (320-339)
- Tynan R, Marsh D, O'Kane D and O'Hare G Intelligent agents for wireless sensor networks Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems, (1179-1180)
- Hempstead M, Tripathi N, Mauro P, Wei G and Brooks D An Ultra Low Power System Architecture for Sensor Network Applications Proceedings of the 32nd annual international symposium on Computer Architecture, (208-219)
- Tynan R, O’Hare G, Marsh D and O’Kane D Multi-agent system architectures for wireless sensor networks Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Computational Science - Volume Part III, (687-694)
- Hempstead M, Tripathi N, Mauro P, Wei G and Brooks D (2019). An Ultra Low Power System Architecture for Sensor Network Applications, ACM SIGARCH Computer Architecture News, 33:2, (208-219), Online publication date: 1-May-2005.
- Polastre J, Szewczyk R and Culler D Telos Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, (48-es)
- O'Hare G, O'Grady M, Collier R, Keegan S, O'Kane D, Tynan R and Marsh D Ambient intelligence through agile agents Ambient Intelligence for Scientific Discovery, (286-310)
- Lorincz K, Malan D, Fulford-Jones T, Nawoj A, Clavel A, Shnayder V, Mainland G, Welsh M and Moulton S (2004). Sensor Networks for Emergency Response, IEEE Pervasive Computing, 3:4, (16-23), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2004.
- Gaynor M, Moulton S, Welsh M, LaCombe E, Rowan A and Wynne J (2018). Integrating Wireless Sensor Networks with the Grid, IEEE Internet Computing, 8:4, (32-39), Online publication date: 1-Jul-2004.
- Hill J, Horton M, Kling R and Krishnamurthy L (2004). The platforms enabling wireless sensor networks, Communications of the ACM, 47:6, (41-46), Online publication date: 1-Jun-2004.
- Levis P, Madden S, Gay D, Polastre J, Szewczyk R, Woo A, Brewer E and Culler D The emergence of networking abstractions and techniques in TinyOS Proceedings of the 1st conference on Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation - Volume 1, (1-1)
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