Transforming Protocol Specifications for Wireless Sensor Networks into Efficient Embedded System Implementations

In this paper, we present an efficient way how protocols modelled in SDL (Specification and Description Language) can be transformed into efficient implementations for resource-constrained wireless sensor nodes. We will show how SDL concepts such as processes, timers, or signals can be mapped to operating system concepts provided by the Reflex operating system. Our approach is based on optimized, automatically generated C code derived from the Telelogic TAU SDL Suite that can be left as is. The overhead caused by our SDL run-time environment is minimal, thus making it applicable in embedded systems. By pre-allocating memory for SDL signals it is possible to completely avoid dynamic memory allocation. We will also highlight some SDL modelling guidelines that help to avoid common SDL implementation overhead.