A configurable middleware for processing in heterogeneous industrial intelligent sensors

Sensor and Actuator Networks (SAN) are distributed systems deployed to sense, monitor and act on the environment. They may include any of the following: sensors, wiring, embedded system components, wireless communication and backbone servers. Given current technological advances, costs and flexibility advantages of wireless sensor networks technology, wireless SAN (WSAN) deployments are being considered in such environments. WSAN nodes are small embedded devices that provide sensing, acting and (limited) in-network processing capabilities. From a system point-of-view the whole industrial network is a hardware and software heterogeneous distributed system with some computation-capable nodes (WSAN nodes and servers). A significant research challenge is how to provide a single homogeneous interface that allows configuration and operation of any computation-capable node or group of nodes and hides node heterogeneity, as opposed to hand-coding every component of the system for every minor or major configuration change and/or having multiple configuration systems. In this paper we propose a homogeneous configuration approach over heterogeneous WSAN networks. Our approach was successfully tested in an industrial refinery setting, allowing deployers to configure and re-configure the system to meet specific needs.