The Stream System: a Data Collection and Communication Abstraction for Sensor Networks

Sensor network software is still in its youth. Due to sensor hardware limitations and the highly specific nature of application domains, existing software is generally poorly structured. We identify data collection, intra-sensor and inter-sensor communication as recurring activities in sensor network applications and propose a software module that abstracts these activities: the stream system. Applications running on the sensors rely on the stream system to disregard the actual implementation details of collecting transducer readings and passing such data to other local or remote computational entities.