A Filesystem Interface for Sensor Networks

Sensor network users currently face enormous challenges, including programming difficulty and the use of unfamiliar, complex interfaces. To date, most usability research with respect to sensor networks have focused on simplifying programming by offering powerful programming abstractions. Unfortunately, such work does little to encourage ordinary users, such as application scientists, to adopt sensor networks. In order to address these issues we have developed a filesystem interface for sensor networks. By treating a sensor network as a standard Unix filesystem, users are able to use familiar tools to interface with sensor networks. This simplifies management and debugging. Similarly, programs originally designed for filesystems, such as file-sharing programs, can be used to extend sensor networks. Finally, users are also able to prototype applications using pre-existing programming environments that interface with the sensor network through the file I/O interface.