Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have found more and more applications in a variety of pervasive computing environments. However, how to support the development, maintenance, deployment and execution of applications over WSNs remains to be a nontrivial and challenging task, mainly because of the gap between the high level requirements from pervasive computing applications and the underlying operation of WSNs. Middleware for WSN can help bridge the gap and remove impediments. In recent years, research has been carried out on WSN middleware from different aspects and for different purposes. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing work on WSN middleware, seeking for a better understanding of the current issues and future directions in this field. We propose a reference framework to analyze the functionalities of WSN middleware in terms of the system abstractions and the services provided. We review the approaches and techniques for implementing the services. On the basis of the analysis and by using a feature tree, we provide taxonomy of the features of WSN middleware and their relationships, and use the taxonomy to classify and evaluate existing work. We also discuss open problems in this important area of research.ularity of WSN-based applications.WSN middleware helps the programmer develop applications in several ways. First, it provides appropriate system abstractions, so that the application programmer can focus on the application logic without caring too much about the lower level implementation details. Second, it provides reusable code services, such as code update, and data services, such as data filtering, so that the application programmer can deploy and execute the application without being troubled with complex and tedious functions. Third, it helps the programmer in network infrastructure management and adaptation by providing efficient resource services, e.g., power management. It also supports system integration, monitoring, as well as system security.

Performance and Challenges of Service-Oriented Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

“…The middleware architectures for WSNs have the ability to distribute sensor nodes, sink nodes, and high level applications [13], as shown in Figure 1. This middleware does not support SOM architecture that is integrated with WSNs [4].…”

FTT-MA: A Flexible Time-Triggered Middleware Architecture for Time Sensitive, Resource-Aware AmI Systems

“…In particular, the work in [19] proposes a formal context model based on four ontologies: users, devices, environment and services. Other works take in consideration the special needs of the underlying network technology; for example, the work in [20] compares the characteristics of several special purpose middleware architectures that execute on top of wireless sensor networks (WSNs).…”

Autonomic Wireless Sensor Networks: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Typically, WSNs were designed to meet the needs of a single target application usually of a single user, who was also the infrastructure owner. However, with the rapid evolution in this field combined with the increasing complexity of sensors 2 Journal of Sensors and applications, the need of specific middleware platforms for these networks has risen [4]. A WSN middleware is layered software that lies between application code and the communication infrastructure providing, via well-defined interfaces, a set of services that may be configured to facilitate the application development and its execution in an efficient way for a distributed environment [5].…”