NeTS-NOSS: Unified and Configurable Power Management for Wireless Sensor Networks

Washington University, Saint Louis MO

Investigators

Abstract

Power management is critical to wireless sensor networks because of two characteristics shared by many applications: wireless sensor networks must operate on batteries as wired power supplies are inaccessible in deployment environments; and at the same time they must achieve extremely long operational lifetimes. Despite earlier research on various power management strategies, application developers still face the important challenge of integrating multiple power management strategies into a coherent solution for an entire sensor network. Furthermore, as sensor network applications and platforms continue to evolve, it is important to support flexible power management for diverse applications and network platforms. To address the challenges above, this project develops a Unified and Configurable Power Management (UCPM), a unified framework for configurable and composible power management in wireless sensor networks. The UCPM framework comprises three innovative components: (1) unified architectural abstractions that facilitate the integration of different power management strategies, (2) high-level modeling abstractions that characterize the key properties of applications, network platforms, and power management strategies, and (3) configuration and analysis tools that generate integrated power management strategies customized for given applications and networks. The UCPM architecture and tools enable application developers to improve network lifetime while reducing development cost and delay for power-critical applications such as structural health monitoring and wild fire monitoring. The UCPM framework will be disseminated to the broad developer community through its integration with overall sensor network architecture and a widely used operating system for sensor networks.