SenseWrap: A service oriented middleware with sensor virtualization and self-configuration

This paper presents the design and implementation of a simple and elegant middleware architecture providing virtual sensors as representatives for any type of physical sensors. With our middleware, clients can seamlessly discover sensor-hosted services through Zeroconf and it provides a standardized communication interface that applications can use without having to deal with sensor-specific details. The limited capabilities of most types of sensors prevent the inclusion of a full communication stack with IP addressing. Yet, through the use of virtual sensors, a uniform communication interface based on UDP/TCP sockets can be exposed to clients. This will significantly simplify application development for integrated services involving multiple types of sensors. Our benchmarks shows that our middleware scales well beyond the requirements of a private smart home.