Building intelligent middleware for large scale CPS systems

This paper presents a study on building intelligent middleware on wireless sensor network (WSN) for large-scale cyber-physical systems (LCPS). A large portion of WSN projects has focused on low-level algorithms such as routing, MAC layers, and data aggregation. At a higher level, various WSN applications with specific target environments have been developed and deployed. Most applications are built directly on top of a small OS, which is notoriously hard to work with, and results in applications that are fragile and cannot be ported to other platforms. The gap between the low level algorithms and the application development process has received significantly less attention. Our interest is to fill that gap by developing intelligent middleware for building LCPS applications. The goal for our research is to produce a "zero-cost" deployment capability where an LCPS application does not need to be constrained on what and where sensors are deployed. An intelligent WSN middleware can automatically perform optimal sensor node configuration, bandwidth allocation, fault management, and re-configuration in response to new missions and new devices available.