Gilman Tolle

Design of an application-cooperative management system for wireless sensor networks

This paper argues for the usefulness of an application-cooperative interactive management system for wireless sensor networks and presents SNMS, a sensor network management system. SNMS is designed to be simple and have minimal impact on memory and network traffic, while remaining open and flexible. The system is evaluated in light of issues derived from real deployment experiences.

ExScal: elements of an extreme scale wireless sensor network

Project ExScal (for extreme scale) fielded a 1000+ node wireless sensor network and a 200+ node peer-to-peer ad hoc network of 802.11 devices in a 13km by 300m remote area in Florida, USA during December 2004. In comparison with previous deployments, the ExScal application is relatively complex and its networks are the largest ones of either type fielded to date. In this paper, we overview the key requirements of ExScal, the corresponding design of the hardware/software platform and application, and some results of our experiments.

Trio: enabling sustainable and scalable outdoor wireless sensor network deployments

We present the philosophy, design, and initial evaluation of the Trio testbed, a new outdoor sensor network deployment that consists of 557 solar-powered motes, seven gateway nodes, and a root server. The testbed covers an area of approximately 50,000 square meters and was in continuous operation during the last four months of 2005. This new testbed in one of the largest solar-powered outdoor sensor networks ever constructed and it offers a unique platform on which both systems and application software can be tested safely at scale. The testbed is based on Trio, a new mote platform that provides sustainable operation, enables efficient in situ interaction, and supports fail-safe programming. The motivation behind this testbed was to evaluate robust multi-target tracking algorithms at scale. However, using the testbed has stressed the system software, networking protocols, and management tools in ways that have exposed subtle but serious weaknesses that were never discovered using indoor testbeds or smaller deployments. We have been iteratively improving our support software, with the eventual aim of creating a stable hardware-software platform for sustainable, scalable, and flexible testbed deployments

sMAP: a simple measurement and actuation profile for physical information

As more and more physical information becomes available, a critical problem is enabling the simple and efficient exchange of this data. We present our design for a simple RESTful web service called the Simple Measuring and Actuation Profile (sMAP) which allows instruments and other producers of physical information to directly publish their data. In our design study, we consider what information should be represented, and how it fits into the RESTful paradigm. To evaluate sMAP, we implement a large number of data sources using this profile, and consider how easy it is to use to build new applications. We also design and evaluate a set of adaptations made at each layer of the protocol stack which allow sMAP to run on constrained devices.

Marionette: using RPC for interactive development and debugging of wireless embedded networks

A main challenge with developing applications for wireless embedded systems is the lack of visibility and control during execution of an application. In this paper, we present a tool suite called Marionette that provides the ability to call functions and to read or write variables on pre-compiled, embedded programs at run-time, without requiring the programmer to add any special code to the application. This rich interface facilitates interactive development and debugging at minimal cost to the node

Project exscal

Project ExScal (for Extreme Scale) fielded a 1000+ node wireless sensor network and a 200+ node ad hoc network of 802.11 devices in a 1.3km by 300m remote area in Florida during December 2004. In several respects, these networks are likely the largest deployed networks of either type to date. We overview here the key requirements of the project, describe briefly how they were met and experimentally tested, and provide a pointer to our experimental results.

Low power mesh networking with Telos and IEEE 802.15.4

A family of low power wireless sensor network devices have been built to enable research and deployments. The devices have featured commercial off the shelf (COTS) components integrated together on a platform commonly referred to as a ”mote”, designed by the University of California, Berkeley. Motes have been used to evaluate wireless sensor network algorithms as well as for environmental monitoring and object tracking deployments. Miniature wireless devices are ideal for high density long term deployments in areas otherwise unsuitable for wired connections or passive devices. We designed and built a new mote platform, Telos (see Figure 1), for use in ultra low power wireless sensor networks [3]. Featuring a TI MSP430 microcontroller, a CC2420 IEEE 802.15.4 compliant radio, and built in sensors, Telos is the lowest power mote to date. IEEE 802.15.4 provides packet handling support and sophisticated channel encoding and encryption not found in previous wireless transceivers. Using these new primitives, we show robust, low power wireless mesh networking using IEEE 802.15.4.

A 6LoWPAN application environment

We are demonstrating a networking technology and application environment that connects highly-constrained low-power wireless embedded sensor networks with large-scale IP networks. This technology is based on the 6LoWPAN IPv6-over-802.15.4 adptation layer.