An RPC design for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) will profoundly influence the ubiquitous computing landscape. Their utility derives not from the computational capabilities of any single sensor node, but from the emergent capabilities of many communicating sensor nodes. Consequently, the details of communication within and across single hop neighborhoods is a fundamental component of most WSN applications. But these details are often complex, and popular embedded languages for WSNs do not provide suitable communication abstractions. We propose that the absence of such abstractions contributes to the difficulty of developing large-scale WSN applications. To address this issue, we present the design and implementation of a remote procedure call (RPC) abstraction for nesC and TinyOS, the defacto standard for developing WSN applications. We present the key language extensions, operating system services, and automation tools that enable the proposed abstraction. We illustrate these contributions in the context of a small case study, and draw preliminary conclusions regarding the suitably of our approach to resource-constrained sensor nodes