T-Res: Enabling Reconfigurable In-network Processing in IoT-based WSNs

Internet of Things (IoT) standards are a key technology for enabling multi-purpose Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Indeed, by providing a common interface for interacting with sensor nodes, they help decouple the sensing infrastructure from the applications running on top of it. To this end, much work has been done to define the semantics for controlling sensors and actuators. On the contrary, a solution for manipulating the in-network processing performed by an IoT-based WSN is still undefined. As a result, IoT applications usually run “out-of-the-network”, e.g., in high-end application servers or in the Cloud. This paper addresses such a limitation by proposing TRes, a new programming abstraction for IoT-based WSNs. The proposed solution allows using IoT protocols for changing the data-processing performed by sensor nodes and the interaction among them, thus enabling “in-network” applications. To prove the feasibility of T-Res, a real implementation based on Contiki OS is presented and evaluated. Evaluation results show that the use of T-Res, compared with the traditional “out-of-network” approach, lowers the risk of network congestion, reduces the power consumption, and can improve application response time.