A Structured Hardware/Software Architecture for Embedded Sensor Nodes

—Owing to the limited requirement for sensor processing in early networked sensor nodes, embedded software was generally built around the communication stack. Modern sensor nodes have evolved to contain significant on-board functionality in addition to communications, including sensor processing, energy management, actuation and locationing. The embedded software for this functionality, however, is often implemented in the application layer of the communications stack, resulting in an unstructured, top-heavy and complex stack. In this paper, we propose an embedded system architecture to formally specify multiple interfaces on a sensor node. This architecture differs from existing solutions by providing a sensor node with multiple stacks (each stack implements a separate node function), all linked by a shared application layer. This establishes a structured platform for the formal design, specification and implementation of modern sensor and wireless sensor nodes. We describe a practi...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICCCN
• Authors: Geoff V. Merrett, Alex S. Weddell, Nick R. Harris, Bashir M. Al-Hashimi, Neil M. White
• Keywords: Communications, ICCCN 2008, Modern Sensor, Sensor Nodes, Sensor Processing