An embedded real-time network microkernel dedicated to wireless sensor network: ERNμK

Wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes have strict constrained resource and wireless communication function. Traditional embedded operation systems are either resource consumptive or nonsupport for real-time multi-task operations. This paper presents an embedded real-time network microkernel dedicated to WSN: ERNμK. The kernel consists of two components: a super-small distributed real-time microkernel: SDREAM and a minimal real-time and embedded TCP/IP stack: ERNμK. SDREAM is a tuple-based message-driven microkernel. It adopts a meta language: kernel modeling language to define and describe the abstract manners of system primitives. The IPC and synchronization is based on the LINDA concept: the "tuple" model implemented by two light primitives (SND: OUT & RCV: IN). In order to simplify the TCP/IP implementation, ERNμK adopts some simplification mechanisms: protocol simplification hypothesis, a specific buffering subsystem and a simplifying message subsystem in view of system resources, applications and network environment. ERNμK has been ported and evaluated on two platforms: microcontroller (MSP430F149) and DSP (TMS320C5410). The performance results show that ERNμK has tiny resource requirements and is suitable for hard real-time multi-task WSN applications.