Nviz - a general purpose visualization tool for Wireless Sensor Networks

In a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), data manipulation and representation is a crucial part and can take a lot of time to be developed from scratch. Although various visualization tools have been created for certain projects so far, these tools can only be used in certain scenarios, due to their hard-coded packet formats and network's properties. To speed up development process, a visualization tool which can adapt to any kind of WSN is essentially necessary. For this purpose, a general-purpose visualization tool - NViz, which can represent and visualize data for any kind of WSN, is proposed. NViz allows user to set their network's properties and packet formats through XML files. Based on properties defined, user can choose the meaning of them and let NViz represents the data respectively. Furthermore, a better Replay mechanism, which lets researchers and developers debug their WSN easily, is also integrated in this tool. NViz is designed based on a layered architecture which allows for clear and well-defined interrelationships and interfaces between each components.