A Network Application Programming Interface for Data Processing in Sensor Networks

Since the inception of sensor networks, a wide variety of algorithms for in-network data processing have emerged. To enable practical implementation of a broad class of these proposed algorithms, sufficient application programming support for network communications is critical. While standard (but relatively low-level) network application programming interfaces (APIs) such as those implemented in TinyOS can provide a basis for flexible application-specific customization, experience in the past several years has shown that data processing algorithms in fact share similar higher level communication needs that can be better supported. In this paper, we first identify common communication patterns through an extensive survey of data processing algorithms proposed over the past four years in the proceedings of the Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN) conference. We then present the design of a higher level network API for sensor networks that is powerful, convenient to use, and compact. Many familiar issues in traditional networking such as addressing and reliability have vastly different solutions in the sensor network environment, and we carefully develop the rationales behind the design of the resulting network API, providing an in-depth discussion on the fundamental design decisions. We believe that the proposed network API serves as a starting point for the implementation of a more comprehensive sensor network communication middleware than what is found in currently available systems, enabling algorithm developers to quickly and easily implement their designs without having to handle low-level networking details themselves.