Building Sensor Networks with Distributed Intelligence Using Java RMI

Measuring sensors are typically unintelligent. An intelligent monitoring and control system adds the necessary levels of intelligence so that sensors can be read and their behaviour can be controlled. The modern programmable embedded systems provide a cost effective yet powerful means of building distributed sensor networks for monitoring and control systems. When combined with the programmatic strengths of Java RMI and Oracle RDBMS, these embedded systems can be turned into powerful distributed sensor networks. This paper demonstrates the integration of several technologies including programmable Web enabled embedded systems, Java RMI Callback features, Oracle RDBMS and the Internet to provide a solution to the problem of monitoring and controlling unintelligent measuring sensors/instruments. The addition of the Oracle backend allows for long term storage of captured data that can be queried using standard SQL and used later, for example in carrying out trend analysis.