RESEARCH ON MIDDLEWARE APPLICATION

TO SUPPORT WSN

Submitted by
D.Rajeswari
IIIMCA

Under the guidance of

Vanithasidambaranathan M.Phil.,P.hd.,
Assistant professor
 Agenda
1. Wireless Sensor Network
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Application Examples
1.3 Sensor Network Architecture
1.4 sensor node view
1.5 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
 1.1 INTRODUCTION
Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are distributed systems
typically composed of embedded devices, each equipped with
processing unit,
memory
Battery,
wireless communication interface,or radio transceiver,
Sensors and/or Actuators .

Used to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental

conditions.eg.sound,temp,pressure

A sensor network normally constitutes a wireless ad-hoc

network .
 Agenda
1. Wireless Sensor Network
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Application Examples
1.3 Sensor Network Architecture
1.4 sensor node view
1.5 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
 1.2 WSN APPLICATIONS
Military applications:
- target detection
- battlefield surveillance
- nuclear, biological and chemical attack detection etc.
Enviromental applications:
- forest fire detection
- flood detection
- structure monitoring
Health applications
- monitor human physiological data
- drug administration
 Agenda
1. Wireless Sensor Network
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Application Examples
1.3 Sensor Network Architecture
1.4 sensor node - hardware
1.5 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
1.3 Sensor Network Architecture
 Agenda
1. Introduction of Sensor Network
1.1 Application Examples
1.2 Sensor Network Architecture
1.3 Sensor node -hardware
1.4 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
1.4 Sensor Node-hardware
• Sensing: sensor --a transducer
that converts a physical,
chemical, or biological
parameter into an electrical
signal
• Processing:
microprocessor(CPU)
data storage(Mem)
AD converter
• Communicating: data
transceiver(Radio),
• Energy source: battery
 Agenda
1. Introduction of Sensor Network
1.1 Application Examples
1.2 Sensor Network Architecture
1.3 Hardware and Software
1.4 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
1.5 Sensor Network's features
Restricted Resources: energy, computing power, memory,
and communication bandwidth.

Network Dynamics: node mobility, environmental

obstructions, hardware failures.

Scale of Deployments: thousands or millions of nodes.

 Real-world intergation: seperation of events in time and
space and correlate information from multiple sources

Collection and Processing of Sensor Data: preprocess data

at the source

e.g. smart sensor ( IEEE 1451 )

Integration with Background Infrastructures: tasking the

sensor network, and provide resources (eg. computing power)
 Agenda
1. Introduction of Sensor Network
1.1 Application Examples
1.2 Sensor Network Architecture
1.3 Hardware and Software
1.4 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.
3. Conclusion

4. References
 2.1 Why do we need Middleware for
WSN?
What is it?
A software infrastructure that glues together the network
hardware, operating systems, network stacks, and
applications.
Role
– Provide standardized system services to diverse
applications.
– Provide a runtime environment that can support and
coordinate multiple applications.
– Provide mechanisms to achieve adaptive and efficient
utilization of system resources.
 Traditional middleware systems
– Normally heavyweight in terms of memory and
computation and therefore not suitable for SNs.
Java RMI (Remote Method Invocation)
EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans)
CORBA (Common Object Request Broker
Architecture)
A middleware for WSN
- should facilitate development, maintenance, deployment
and execution of sensing-based applications.
 Agenda
1. Introduction of Sensor Network
1.1 Application Examples
1.2 Sensor Network Architecture
1.3 Hardware and Software
1.4 Sensor Network's Features

2. Middleware for Sensor Network.

2.1 Why do we need Middleware for SN?
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
2.3 Middleware approaches for SN.

3. Conclusion

4. References
2.2 Challenges in designing middleware.
Limited power and resources.

Middleware should provide mechanisms for efficient processor and memory use
while enabling lower-power communication and prolong sensor node lifetime.
Scalability, mobility, and dynamic network topology.

Middleware should maintain performance and robust operation while

network changes dynamically. Also, It should support mechanisms for fault
tolerance and sensor node self-configuration and self-maintenance.

Heterogeneity.
CPU-power, networking, memory and storage, operating systems.
Middleware should able to interface various kinds of hardware, software
and networks.

Dynamic network organization.

Middleware should support Ad-hoc capability to discover resource and its

location which affect the trade-offs among latency, reliability, and energy.
 Challenges in designing middleware.
Real-world integration.

– Middleware should provide real-time services.

Application knowledge.

– Middleware design should balance between application specificity and

middleware generality.
Data aggregation.

– Middleware should able to aggregate data to eliminate redundancy and

minimize the number of transmissions to the sink.
Security.

– Middleware efforts should concentrate on developing and integrating

security in the initial phases of software design,
 2.3 Middleware approaches for WSN.
Virtual Machine (Cluster-Based)approach

Because of its similarity to the virtual machine concept in traditional distributed

systems in terms of providing application semantic transparency from the physical
infrastructure.

Pros:
Common abstraction.
Sand-boxing.

Cons:
High overhead
Difficult to exploit heterogeneity.

Examples
Mate
Magnetos
 Middleware approaches for WSN.
Modular programming approach
Pros:
Only parts of the program need to be updated, propagate efficiently.
Cons:
High overhead, Doesn’t allow hardware heterogeneity.
Example:
IMPALA
As modular as possible, efficiency of updates and support dynamic
applications.
Doesn't allow hardware heterogeneity.
Application Adaption with different profiles possible. (energy
efficient)
Use in the ZebraNet project (wildlife monitoring).
 Middleware approaches for WSN.
Database approach
Pros:
Entire sensor network is abstracted as a virtual relational database.
Ease to interoperate with existing systems.
Cons:
Doesn’t support real-time applications, and provides only approximate
results.

Example:
Cougar
Represents all sensors and sensor data in a relational database.
Allows the scheduling of ongoing queries that provide incremental results.
Decentralized Implementation, message passing based on controlled
flooding.
SINA (System Information Networking Architecture)
Based on a spreadsheet database, wherein network is a collection of data-
sheets and cells are attributes.
Queries again performed in an SQL-like language.
Decentralized Implementation based on clustering.
 Middleware approaches for WSN.
Message Oriented
Pros:
Use Publish-subscribe to support asynchronous communication, allowing
a loose coupling between the sender and the receiver
Cons:
Overhead
Example:
MIRES
Publish-subscribe
Multi-Hop Routing
Additional Service (e.g. data Aggregation)
Sense – advertise over P/S and route to Sink.
 Conclusions
Sensor Network can be used in many applications, such as Military,
Environmental and Health…etc.

Its characteristics are tiny node, low power, limited resources, dynamic
network topology and various scales of network deployment.

Middleware is used to connect the network hardware, operating systems,

network stacks, and applications in different approaches.

For examples, Virtual Machine, Mobile Agent, Database and Message

Oriented.
References

Kay Römer, Oliver Kasten and Friedemann Mattern.

“Middleware Challenges for Wireless Sensor Networks”. Mobile
Computing and Communications Review, Vol. 6, Nr. 2, 2002

Ian F. Akyildiz, W. Su, Yogesh Sankarasubramaniam and

ErdalCayirci. “Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey”.
ComputerNetworks, Vol. 38, No. 4, 2002”

Kirsten Terfloth and Jochen Shiller. Driving Forces behind

“Middleware Concepts for Wireless Sensor Networks”. Proc. of the
REALWSN Workshop, 2005
References
W. Heinzelman, A. Murphy, H. Carvalho and M. Perillo.
“Middleware to Support Sensor Network Applications”.
IEEENetwork Magazine Special Issue, January 2004

“Middleware Approaches for Sensor Networks”Summer

School on WSNs and Smart ObjectsSchloss Dagstuhl, Aug.
29th – Sept. 3Rd , 2005

Kay Römer, Oliver Kasten and Friedemann

Mattern.”Middleware Challenges forWireless sensor
Networks”.In COMSWARE, volume 6, pages 1321–1329,
July 2005.