A Component and Policy-Based Approach for Efficient Sensor Network Reconfiguration

Contemporary wireless sensor network deployments are long-lived, large scale and resource constrained. Longevity demands mechanisms that support reconfiguration to meet changing application requirements, large scale demands high-level abstractions to support network management and stringent resource constraints necessitate a high degree of efficiency in middleware to support application development and management. This paper presents the Component and Policy Infrastructure (CaPI), a middleware providing two complementary abstractions for contemporary sensor network development and management. A reconfigurable component model supports embedded developers during initial application development and enables management of evolving functional requirements, while an expressive policy language supports the specification and management of behavioural concerns by administrators or domain experts. CaPI provides a clear decoupling between application logic and behaviour, enabling efficient customization and dynamic reconfiguration of application functionality and behaviour.