Operating systems and network protocols for wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Sensor network protocols exist to satisfy the communication needs of diverse applications, including data collection, event detection, target tracking and control. Network protocols to enable these services are constrained by the extreme resource scarcity of sensor nodes—including energy, computing, communications and storage—which must be carefully managed and multiplexed by the operating system. These challenges have led to new protocols and operating systems that are efficient in their energy consumption, careful in their computational needs and miserly in their memory footprints, all while discovering neighbours, forming networks, delivering data and correcting failures.