A SpaceTime Oriented Macroprogramming Paradigm for Push-Pull Hybrid Sensor Networking

This paper proposes a spatio-temporal macroprogramming paradigm for push-pull hybrid wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The proposed paradigm, called SpaceTime Oriented Programming (STOP), is designed to reduce the complexity of WSN programming by specifying data collection and processing from a global viewpoint as a whole rather than a viewpoint of sensor nodes as individuals. STOP treats space and time as first-class citizens and combines them as spacetime continuum. A spacetime is a three dimensional object that consists of a two spatial dimensions and a time playing the role of the third dimension. STOP allows application developers to program data collection and processing to spacetime, and abstracts away the details in WSNs, such as how many nodes are deployed in a WSN, how nodes are connected with each other and how to route data queries in a WSN. Using the notion of spacetime, data collection/processing is consistently specified for both the past and future in arbitrary spatio-temporal resolutions. This paper describes the design of the STOP language and the implementation of the STOP runtime environment.