The Regiment Macroprogramming System

The development of high-level programming environments is essential if wireless sensor networks are to be accessible to nonexperts. In this paper, we present the Regiment system, which consists of a high-level language for spatiotemporal macroprogramming, along with a compiler that translates global programs into node-level code. In Regiment, the programmer views the network as a set of spatially-distributed data streams. The programmer can manipulate sets of these streams that may be defined by topological or geographic relationships between nodes. Regiment provides a rich set of primitives for processing data on individual streams, manipulating regions, performing aggregation over a region, and triggering new computation within the network. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of the Regiment language and compiler. We describe the deglobalization process that compiles a network-wide representation of the program into a node-level, event-driven program. Deglobalization maps region operations onto associated spanning trees that establish region membership and permit efficient in-network aggregation. We evaluate Regiment in the context of a complex distributed application involving rapid detection of spatially-distributed events, such as wildfires or chemical plumes. Our results show that Regiment makes it possible to develop complex sensor network applications at a global level.