StIgMa: Status information management for evolvable wireless sensor networks

The application of run-time evolvable software stacks promises an increase in the lifetime of wireless sensor network deployments. Besides supporting changing application requirements, said systems allow the underlying platforms to adapt to new environments by replacing system and communication services at runtime. These dynamics across various software layers however complicate the provision of accurate information about the current software and environmental status of a sensor node. This is problematic as sensor network management requires such information to configure efficient systems. As such, a mechanism needs to be in place via which run-time deployable software services can make their status information available to others in a standardized manner. In this paper we introduce StIgMa; a design for a unified node-local status registry on a sensor node. StIgMa´s interfaces are cross-cutting and provide access to status information on all software layers on a sensor node. This is achieved without duplication of status data and avoiding tight coupling of status information providers and clients. To allow multi-user and flexible operation, StIgMa is supported by an extensible namespace for status parameters and a query language. Evaluation of a proof-of-concept implementation confirms that node-local centralized management of status information can be realized in a light-weight manner.