Nano-CF: A coordination framework for macro-programming in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are being used for a number of applications involving infrastructure monitoring, building energy monitoring and industrial sensing. The difficulty of programming individual sensor nodes and the associated overhead have encouraged researchers to design macro-programming systems which can help program the network as a whole or as a combination of subnets. Most of the current macro-programming schemes do not support multiple users seamlessly deploying diverse applications on the same shared sensor network. As WSNs are becoming more common, it is important to provide such support, since it enables higher-level optimizations such as code reuse, energy savings, and traffic reduction. In this paper, we propose a macro-programming framework called Nano-CF, which, in addition to supporting in-network programming, allows multiple applications written by different programmers to be executed simultaneously on a sensor networking infrastructure. This framework enables the use of a common sensing infrastructure for a number of applications without the users being concerned about the applications already deployed on the network. The framework also supports timing constraints and resource reservations using the Nano-RK operating system. Nano-CF is efficient at improving WSN performance by (a) combining multiple user programs, (b) aggregating packets for data delivery, and (c) satisfying timing and energy specifications using Rate-Harmonized Scheduling. Using representative applications, we demonstrate that Nano-CF achieves 90% reduction in Source Lines-of-Code (SLoC) and 50% energy savings from aggregated data delivery.