EcoExec: An Interactive Execution Framework for Ultra Compact Wireless Sensor Nodes

EcoExec is a host-assisted interactive execution environment for wireless sensing systems. Users can interact with sensor nodes by viewing attributes and invoking functions via a command-line interface. Functions that are not resident in the node´s firmware are automatically compiled on the host, packaged up and downloaded to the node, linked, and executed, all seamlessly and transparently to the user. By packaging these features in a dynamically object-oriented programming environment such as Python, EcoExec enables programmers to experiment with features of the wireless sensor nodes and to rapidly develop application software. Most importantly, EcoExec empowers resource-constrained wireless sensor platforms with rich functionalities that would otherwise be prohibitive, thanks to its host-assisted execution feature with code swapping over the network. Experimental results on actual wireless sensor platforms show EcoExec to perform effectively with negligible observed overhead to the user.