FlowTalk: Language Support for Long-Latency Operations in Embedded Devices

Abstract

Abstract-Wireless sensor networks necessitate a programming model different from those used to develop desktop applications. Typically, resources in terms of power and memory are constrained. C is the most common programming language used to develop applications on very small embedded sensor devices. We claim that C does not provide efficient mechanisms to address the implicit asynchronous nature of sensor sampling. C applications for these devices suffer from a disruption in their control flow. In this paper, we present FlowTalk, a new object-oriented programming language aimed at making software development for wireless embedded sensor devices easier. FlowTalk is an object-oriented programming language in which dynamicity (e.g., object creation) has been traded for a reduction in memory consumption. The event model that traditionally comes from using sensors is adapted in FlowTalk with controlled disruption, a light-weight continuation mechanism. The essence of our model is to turn asynchronous long-latency operations into synchronous and blocking method calls. FlowTalk is built for TinyOS and can be used to develop applications that can fit in 4 kB of memory for a large number of wireless sensor devices.

Safe system-level concurrency on resource-constrained nodes

“…Based on these criteria, we chose nesC as the language to compare, given its resource efficiency and high-quality codebase 6 . In addition, nesC is used as benchmark in many systems related to Céu [12,21,4,3]. In particular, the work on Protothreads [12] is a strong reference in the WSN community, and we adhere to similar choices in our evaluation.…”

“…For instance, even object-oriented languages targeting WSNs forbid dynamic allocation [3,33]. Given that we focus on system-level development which does not require rich dynamic functionality, we leave for a future work an in-depth discussion about this issue.…”

“…Many related approaches allow events to be handled in sequence through a blocking primitive, overcoming the main limitation of event-driven systems (column 1 [12,4,27,3,21]). As a natural extension, most of them also keep the state of local variables between reactions to the environment (column 2).…”

A Survey of Asynchronous Programming Using Coroutines in the Internet of Things and Embedded Systems

“…Schimpf 2012 Strube 2010 Karpinski 2007, Fritzsche 2010, Inam 2011, Khezri 2008, Boers 2010, Bergel 2011, Glistvain 2010Susilo 2009, Jahier 2016, Niebert 2014, Evers 2007 Heap Unknown Fig. 8.…”

“…An implementation that supports all three strategies, and allows control over which is used, is therefore desirable. Cohen et al 2007Evers et al 2007Karpinski et al 2007Kumar et al 2007Khezri et al 2008Susilo et al 2009Boers et al 2010Fritzsche et al 2010Glistvain et al 2010St-Amour et al 2010Strube et al 2010Bergel et al 2011Inam et al 2011Schimpf 2012Niebert et al 2014Motika et al 2015Park et al 2015Andersen et al 2016Jahier 2016Andersen et al 2017Kalebe et al 2017 Ideal outcome Key: -e issue is considered and resolved. -e issue is addressed but not resolved.…”