CaRDIN: An Agile Environment for Edge Computing on Reconfigurable Sensor Networks

Sensor networks are now one of the key technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT). An IP-based sensor network allows a natural participation of sensor nodes to the IoT. Smart IoT systems are always constrained by real-time processing. Edge computing can be used to address this constraint. In such system, sensor nodes are often in need of more processing resource while being limited in power consumption. Reconfigurable architectures (i.e. FPGAs) offer a good tradeoff between these two factors. This paper addresses the challenge of developing and deploying IoT edge-centric applications on IP-based sensor networks consisting of hybrid nodes built on top of processors coupled with FPGAs. We introduce CaRDIN, a dedicated agile software/hardware environment and architecture for such system.