System-level approach to the design of collaborative distributed systems based on wireless sensor and actuator networks

Wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSAN) have become pervasive and are found in many embedded and intelligent systems. However, the complexity of applications based on WSANs is limited due to the lack of programming tools for this type of networks. In this paper, we show how a concurrent programming language, SystemJ, is used to develop a middleware-free distributed system that consists of a combination of stationary and mobile WSAN nodes. A distributed Ambient Intelligence (AmI) monitoring and control scenario that consists of collaborating stationary and mobile WSAN nodes with high degree of reactivity is presented. The system is designed and implemented using SystemJ to demonstrate the proposed system-level design approach. SystemJ is designed specifically to handle reactive and concurrent behaviors while providing modular and scalable methodology for distributed system composition. In addition, SystemJ removes the need for a middleware and allows system designers to focus on implementing system functionality rather than to deal with the low level programming details.