A Java-Based Agent Platform for Programming Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are emerging as powerful platforms for distributed embedded computing supporting a variety of high-impact applications. However, programming WSN applications is a complex task that requires suitable paradigms and technologies capable of supporting the specific characteristics of such networks which uniquely integrate distributed sensing, computation and communication. Mobile agents are a distributed computing paradigm based on code mobility that has already demonstrated high effectiveness and efficiency in IP-based highly dynamic distributed environments. Due to their intrinsic characteristics, mobile agents may provide more benefits in the context of WSNs than in conventional distributed environments. In this paper we present the design, implementation and experimentation of MAPS (Mobile Agent Platform for Sun SPOT), an innovative Java-based framework for wireless sensor networks based on Sun SPOT technology which enables agent-oriented programming of WSN applications. The MAPS architecture is based on components that interact through events. Each component offers a minimal set of services to mobile agents that are modeled as multi-plane state machines driven by ECA rules. In particular, the offered services include message transmission, agent creation, agent cloning, agent migration, timer handling and easy access to the sensor node resources (sensors, actuators, input switches, flash memory and battery). Agent programming with MAPS is presented through both a simple example related to mobile agent-based monitoring of a sensor node and a more complex case study for real-time human activity monitoring based on wireless body sensor networks. Moreover, a performance evaluation of MAPS carried out by computing micro-benchmarks, related to agent communication, creation and migration, is illustrated.