Demo Abstract: Programming Wireless Sensor Networks with Logical Neighborhoods: A Road Tunnel Use Case

1 Motivation and Scenario Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) involving actuation are increasingly envisioned in a range of fields [1]. Among these, there is considerable interest in leveraging off WSNs to improve safety in road tunnels [4]. Researchers are envisioning tunnels equipped with WSN nodes that gather physical readings such as temperature and light, monitor the structural integrity of the tunnel, and sense the presence of vehicles to detect a possible traffic congestion. Based on sensed data, the system operates a variety of devices, such as ventilation fans inside the tunnel, and traffic lights at the entrances. For instance, when a sensor detects the presence of a fire in a sector, the fans in the same sector are activated, and the traffic lights are turned red to prevent further vehicles from entering the tunnel. To implement similar systems, dedicated programming abstractions and communication protocols are needed, as the presence of heterogeneous nodes and a highly decentralized form of processing make mainstream solutions (e.g., [5]) no longer applicable. These are usually designed with homogeneous nodes in mind, and focus on a system-wide, centralized task (e.g., data gathering at a single sink). This approach is impractical in systems involving actuation, as it may negatively impact on latency and resource consumption [1]. Instead, in our tunnel scenario the processing involves mostly subsets of nodes sharing similar characteristics, e.g., all the nodes controlling a fan in a specific tunnel sector. Therefore, the programmer must be provided with appropriate abstractions to “slice” the system based on the application requirements. We tackled the above problem with Logical Neighborhoods [7, 8], a programming abstraction that allows to redefine a node’s neighborhood based on logical properties of the nodes, regardless of their physical position.