A dynamic operating system for sensor nodes

Sensor network nodes exhibit characteristics of both embedded systems and general-purpose systems. They must use little energy and be robust to environmental conditions, while also providing common services that make it easy to write applications. In TinyOS, the current state of the art in sensor node operating systems, reusable components implement common services, but each node runs a single statically-linked system image, making it hard to run multiple applications or incrementally update applications. We present SOS, a new operating system for mote-class sensor nodes that takes a more dynamic point on the design spectrum. SOS consists of dynamically-loaded modules and a common kernel, which implements messaging, dynamic memory, and module loading and unloading, among other services. Modules are not processes: they are scheduled cooperatively and there is no memory protection. Nevertheless, the system protects against common module bugs using techniques such as typed entry points, ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: MOBISYS
• Authors: Chih-Chieh Han, Ram Kumar, Roy Shea, Eddie Kohler, Mani B. Srivastava
• Keywords: Common Module Bugs, MOBISYS 2005, Mote-class Sensor Nodes, Sensor Network Nodes, Wireless Networks