Complex Virtual Instrument Model for Ocean Sensor Networks

Virtual instrument (VI) technology is widely used, because it is more cost effective to perform data processing with computer software than with an additional hardware. Traditional VI developments often suffer from low efficiency due to the complex programming and poor interoperability. In this paper, we analyze the data management and analysis requirements of the ocean sensor networks (OSNs), identify the common characteristics of different systems, and propose complex VI model for OSNs (CVI-OSNs). It consists of an object description model to interpret the observation data, a VI model to enable comprehensive analysis of observation data, and a parameter mapping model to associate observed variables and VIs. The presented design method of CVI-OSN systems improves the development efficiency significantly and enables system interoperability. On this basis, a CVI-OSN composition model is proposed to facilitate data integration among different systems for large-scale research of ocean environment variation. The proposed model has been fully applied in the IEEE standard 2402. Moreover, we have conducted practical experiments to evaluate its performance. The result shows that our proposed model is feasible and efficient.