A Middleware to Develop and Test Vehicular Sensor Network Applications

The Smart city ecosystem is composed of several networked devices that provide services to citizens and improve their quality of life. Basic services, which must be exposed by the underlying software infrastructure, require efficient networking and communication protocols to coordinate and manage all the system components. In particular, Vehicular Sensor Networks (VSNs) are envisioned as key components of smart cities. Verification is crucial in such a highly dynamic scenario to ensure operation correctness and to reduce the development cost of smart applications. However, the rigidity of existing middlewares makes development, reconfiguration, and testing rather difficult. In this work, we propose a middleware that supports development and testing of distributed applications in VSNs. The middleware is based on symbolic processing. Interactive testing as well as incremental development are enabled by the exchange of executable symbolic code among vehicles. The symbolic approach also fosters rapid prototyping and construction of testbeds.