A Classification of the Debugging Techniques of Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are meant for monitoring in remote and inaccessible locations where it is not feasible to install conventional wired infrastructure. But the health monitoring system of such networks is relatively intangible to network administrators, because of their complex and unpredictable behavior. In this paper a survey on debugging techniques of wireless sensor networks are presented. The debugging tools are divided on the basis of their usage in application life cycle as pre-deployment, post-deployment and deployment-time validation. Based on the implementation strategies, the debuggers are further classified as software-based, hardware-based and hybrid. A comparative study is made on the debugging tools and a summary is provided in Table I. This paper also discusses about the key characteristics required for implementing an efficient debugging tool for wireless sensor network.