Software development environment for prototyping IEEE 1451 smart sensors

The design and implementation of a sensor network can take many forms. One possible approach is to utilize smart sensors as described in the IEEE 1451 family of standards. In this paper we describe a software development environment for prototyping a 1451 smart sensor. The development environment consists of Gensym G2 to model a sensor gateway and Python for prototyping a sensor protocol stack. Python's strong built-in networking support for TCP and UDP make it a good choice for implementing a protocol stack. Additionally, we are developing an Ethereal dissector for 1451 protocol development and debugging.