Improving performance of a Java-based platform for Wireless Sensor Network applications

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are used in a great number of applications. Unfortunately the programming of each node is till now a problem that limits the diffusion of this technology in commercial applications. In fact, in order to meet the strict requirements of the WSN, such as power optimization, specific operative systems (TinyOS) and programming languages have been used. On the contrary, the Sun SPOT platform introduces the Java language and high level programming environment. This very useful feature seems to decrease the synchronization capability of wireless nodes if compared to traditional low-level programming platforms. Aim of this paper is to enhance synchronization and timestamping of Sun SPOT allowing the implementation of time critical applications. Experimental results show how the timestamping resolution has been improved from 1 ms to about 1 μs.