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A Remote Code Update Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks

Thanos Stathopoulos, John Heidemann, and Deborah Estrin
USC/Information Sciences Institute

Abstract

 Wireless sensor networks consist of collections of small, low-power nodes that interface or interact with the physical environment. The ability to add new functionality or perform software maintenance without having to physically reach each individual node is already an essential service, even at the limited scale at which current sensor networks are deployed. TinyOS supports single-hop over-the-air reprogramming today, but the need to reprogram sensors in a multihop network will become particularly critical as sensor networks mature and move toward larger deployment sizes. In this paper we present Multihop Over-the-Air Programming (MOAP), a code distribution mechanism specifically targeted for Mica-2 Motes. We discuss and analyze the design goals, constraints, choices and optimizations focusing in particular on dissemination strategies and retransmission policies. We have implemented MOAP on Mica-2 motes and we evaluate that implementation using both emulation and testbed experiments. We show that our dissemination mechanism obtains a 60­90% performance improvement in terms of required transmissions compared to flooding. We also show that a very simple windowed retransmission tracking scheme is nearly as effective as arbitrary repairs and yet is much better suited to energy and memory constrained embedded systems.

Availability

This paper is available in several formats: abstract web page with pointers and cites, PDF, paper copies can be obtained by mail to the authors. Copyright terms for this paper appear below.

Reference

Stathopoulos03b
Thanos Stathopoulos, John Heidemann, and Deborah Estrin. A Remote Code Update Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks. Technical Report CENS-TR-30, University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Embedded Networked Computing, November, 2003. <http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Stathopoulos03b.html>. 
@techreport{Stathopoulos03b,
	author = "Thanos Stathopoulos and John Heidemann and Deborah Estrin",
	title = "A Remote Code Update Mechanism for Wireless Sensor Networks",
	institution = "University of California, Los Angeles, Center for Embedded Networked Computing",
	year = "2003",
	number = "CENS-TR-30",
	month = "November",
	keywords = "MOAP, multi-hop over-the-air programming",
	otherurl = "http://lecs.cs.ucla.edu/~thanos/moap-TR.pdf",
	url = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Stathopoulos03b.html",
	pdfurl = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Stathopoulos03b.pdf",
	copyrightholder = "authors",
}

Copyright

This paper is copyright © 2003 by its authors. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that new copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Abstracting with credit is permitted.

To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission of the authors.


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