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Abstract-Much effort has been spent on the optimization of sensor networks, mainly concerning their performance and power efficiency. Furthermore, open communication protocols for the exchange of sensor data have been developed and widely adopted, making sensor data widely available for software applications. However, less attention has been given to the interoperability of sensor networks and sensor network applications at a semantic level. This hinders the reuse of sensor networks in different applications and the evolution of existing sensor networks and their applications. The main contribution of this paper is an ontology-based approach and architecture to address this problem. We developed an ontology that covers concepts regarding examinations as well as measurements, including the circumstances in which the examination and measurement have been performed. The underlying architecture secures a loose coupling at the semantic level to facilitate reuse and evolution. The ontology has the potential of supporting not only correct interpretation of sensor data, but also ensuring its appropriate use in accordance with the purpose of a given sensor network application. The ontology has been specialized and applied in a remote patient monitoring example, demonstrating the aforementioned potential in the e-health domain.

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This paper addresses a framework to evaluate trustworthiness of a Body Area Sensor Networks (BASN), in particular, of sensor readings. We show that such trustworthiness is to be interpreted with respect to a certain statement or goal; its evaluation is based on quality aspects derived from observations and opinions from others. We examine relevant quality aspects of sensor readings which correspond to potential deviating behaviors of sensors. We then look at how to derive such qualities from observations taking uncertainty into the evaluation as well as decay over time. We develop an extension of subjective logic for this purpose and we show how we can compute quality properties without storing long time series. We then demonstrate this for two examples, including Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Electrocardiography (ECG) sensed data.

Body Sensor Networks (BSNs) are used for diverse applications ranging from monitoring for medical purposes, sport coaching to computer gaming. This leads to viewing the BSN as an application platform and requires the capability to dynamically extend and configure BSN applications, including reprogramming the sensor nodes of the BSN. We propose a trust management model along with a component-based architecture to maintain the BSN as trustworthy platform under such changes in applications. With this model the trustworthiness can be autonomically evaluated and monitored at component, application, and system levels with respect to properties of security, dependability, and performance. The usage of the model is shown with an example of an ECG monitoring application. 1 The VITRUVIUS project is supported by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs under the Innovation Oriented Research Program (IOP GenCom).