SNIF: Sensor Network Inspection Framework

Recent experience with the deployment of sensor networks demonstrates that it is far from trivial to setup a working larger-scale sensor network in the field. Even though simulations and experiments with lab testbeds confirmed a working system, subtle real-world influences lead to frequent failures in the field. Identifying and fixing these problems in the field is currently a difficult and cumbersome task due to the lack of appropriate concepts and tools. In this paper we address this issue by, firstly, classifying common problems that have been encountered during deployment. We then show that many of these problems can be detected by overhearing and analyzing sensor network traffic without need for an instrumentation of sensor nodes. Based on this observation, we develop a tool to inspect a deployed sensor network, consisting of a distributed network sniffer and a data-stream-based framework for online traffic analysis. We demonstrate and evaluate how this tool can be used to debug a typical data gathering application. 1