Debugging the Internet of Things: The Case of Wireless Sensor Networks

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the strong potential to support a human society interacting more symbiotically with its physical environment. Indeed, the emergence of tiny devices that sense environmental cues and trigger actuators after consulting logic and human preferences promises a more environmentally aware and less wasteful society. However, the IoT inherently challenges software development processes, particularly techniques for ensuring software reliability. Researchers have developed debugging tools for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which can be viewed as the enablers of perception in the IoT. These tools gather run-time information on individual sensor node executions and node interactions and then compress that information.