increasing number of applications and technologies deployed. This work presents the demonstration proposal for a web-based integrated network and data.
2011 Eighth IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Systems
Design and Implementation of An Integrated Network and Data Management System for Heterogeneous WSNs Miguel Navarro, Diviyansh Bhatnagar, Rui Liu, Yao Liang Department of Computer and Information Science Indiana University - Purdue University Indianapolis, Indiana, USA {mignavar, dbhatnag, liurui, yliang}@cs.iupui.edu
is able to effectively support a variety of applications deployed in multiple WSNs from different administrations that could also involve different WSN platforms and technologies. Users will be able to access the management system independently, retrieving any information and monitoring any WSN(s) operations with a unified set of tools, without dealing with any of the specific details and complexity of underlying proprietary WSN-gateway commands and configurations. Thus, our system provides a unified management framework for users with different underlying WSN platforms and technologies. Furthermore, any newly deployed WSN(s) at new site(s) can easily join this unified management system with minimal effort. Figure 1 illustrates the general architecture of the system, where multiple WSNs are connected to a management server to which multiple users can remotely access.
Abstract—Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are being used in a variety of applications including environmental monitoring, event detection, object tracking, and healthcare applications. Network management of WSNs is one of the key practical challenges that arise from the increasing number of applications and technologies deployed. This work presents the demonstration proposal for a web-based integrated network and data management system that is aimed at: (1) systematically supporting heterogeneous WSNs with a unified management system; (2) presenting a clear separation between WSN management and application functions; and (3) offering management functionalities with a clear user interface.
I.
INTRODUCTION
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are very promising for various sensing and actuating tasks in environmental monitoring, event detection, object tracking, healthcare applications, and many others. Since WSN motes are usually deployed in harsh environments, WSN management becomes increasingly important to monitor and ensure that deployed motes operate correctly and healthily along time. The severe resource constraints of WSNs have introduced and involved different hardware and software technologies of sensor networking for specific purposes. Consequently, users face the complexity of interacting with diverse technologies from different manufacturers and specific requirements [1]. Indeed, the emergence of multiple WSN platforms and their different built-in management functions, operating in different deployment sites of an organization, has made an effective network and data management become even more challenging. We refer to this type of networks as Heterogeneous WSNs. We have developed a novel web-based Integrated Network and Data Management System for Heterogeneous WSNs (INDAMS). Our system is a framework for heterogeneous WSN management based on three fundamental design criteria: (1) systematically supporting heterogeneous WSNs with a unified management system; (2) clearly separating WSN management functions from WSN applications; and (3) providing an easily accessible web-based user interface for management functionalities. In this way, our system 978-0-7695-4469-4/11 $26.00 © 2011 IEEE DOI 10.1109/MASS.2011.128
Figure 1. An illustration of the system’s general architecture.
In this demonstration, we aim to present the design and implementation of INDAMS working with multiple WSNs including a real-world testbed for environmental monitoring. For the purpose of this demonstration, we will deploy two small WSNs on-site, involving additional technologies, in order to demonstrate the functionalities provided by the management system when working with multiple WSNs. II.
MANAGEMENT SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
To address WSN management heterogeneity introduced by multiple platforms, diverse applications and technologies, INDAMS implements a layered system architecture, presented as follows. 176
This component receives requests from multiple clients and sends requests with right parameters to the Protocol Server. Similarly, it receives data from the Protocol Server and distributes them to the corresponding destination(s). As we can see, the Control and Data Handler serves clients, whereas the Protocol Server serves agents, as shown in Figure 3.
A. Layered Architecture The layered architecture allows us to logically separate different functions, hiding their complexity to upper layers. The five layers are defined as follows: 1) Presentation Layer: This layer is in charge of user-system interaction. It is implemented in a web iterface that captures the information to be processed by other layers, and it displays the results of this processing. 2) Application Layer: It processes the information received from the presentaion layer and implements the interface mechanisms to communicate with lower layers. 3) Unified Gateway Layer: It corresponds to the most important layer in the architecture, since it specifies a unified communication interface with all individual WSNs in terms of natwork management, and thus forms a level of abstraction that hides the management complexity of all heterogeneous WSNs. This enables the definition of unified management functions at this layer regardless of any heterogenety existing in the underlying individual WSNs’ management commands. The Unified Gateway Layer implements the server side of our proposed AgentServer Protocol, which is in charge of coorditanting the communication with multiple Agents. 4) Agent Layer: It is introduced as the middleware that communicates the Unified Gateway Layer with individual WSN Gateways. An agent works directly with a local WSN gateway, allowing our management system to handle multiple and heterogeneous WSNs in a unified and abstract way. A key part of our system is the communication between the Unified Gateway Layer and the Agent Layer, which is governed by our proposed Agent-Server Protocol. The agent layer is in charge of implementing technology-specific functions associated with individual WSN platforms, to communicate with different WSN gateways. 5) Mote Layer: This bottom layer corresponds to a concrete WSN deployment. The network is controlled by one or multiple WSN gateways that provide interfaces to and from motes for control commands, operational states, and data communication.
Figure 2. A component perspective of INDAMS.
Figure 3. Control/Data Handler and Protocol Server.
In our proposed unified and flexible architecture, the concept of clients is not limited to web users. A client can be defined, in this context, as any user or application that is able to perform requests and wants to receive data from WSNs. Hence, a client does not only refer to a web application or a user, but it may also refer to a database configured for a specific WSN, or an external application, or a logging function, and so on. That is, clients represent various subscribers for WSNs’ data. C. Data Management In addition to network management functions, INDAMS also allows users to directly query sensor data collected from the WSN. To this end, INDAMS implements functionalities of data retrieval and visualization via the web interface. For each managed WSN, INDAMS stores different types of information such as metadata, sensor data, and network health data. Those sensor data and network health data can be easily accessed by our system, whereas the metadata are particularly for WSN administrators. Indeed, our system enables an integrated network and data management environment for users. Users are also able to export any subset of data for further sophisticated analysis.
B. Components Architecture In addition to the layered specification of the architecture, INDAMS is designed in terms of components. Many important components can be identified from our description of the layered architecture, such as the Protocol Server and the Protocol Agent. Figure 2 presents a component perspective of INDAMS, including the Control and Data Handler component, which resides in the Application Layer.
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III.
DEMONSTRATION
As mentioned before, the main objective of this demonstration is to present INDAMS working with multiple WSNs. This demonstration will include three different WSNs. The first WSN corresponds to an outdoors testbed, which contains 40 MICAz motes and uses Xserve [2] as the WSN Gateway. The testbed is located in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and is managed by our collaborators from University of Pittsburgh [3]. The remaining two WSNs will be deployed on-site for this demonstration: a network with 4 MICAz motes and Xserve gateway, and the other WSN with 5 TelosB motes and Octopus [4] gateway.
Figure 4. A screenshot of the INDAMS topology monitoring for a WSN testbed deployed in Pittsburgh, PA, USA.
A. Equipment and Requirements The equipment that will be used for this demonstration and their requirements are described as follows: • 2 Laptops: we will provide two laptops configured as WSN gateways. In both of them, we will require Internet access with public IP addresses, or access to a port-forwarding configuration. • 4 MICAz motes: one configured as a base station, and the remaining as regular sensor nodes. • 5 TelosB motes: one configured as a base stations and rest as regular nodes. B. Demonstration Sequence Our demonstration will include the following: • Initial setup and configuration: First we connect the laptops and configure them as the WSN Gateways, one for the MICAz motes, and one for the TelosB motes. This initial set-up may take 20 minutes, before beginning the demonstration. • The demonstration starts with the presentation of each individual managed WSN shown up in our INDAMS via the web interface. • We demonstrate various network management functions, including network geographical/topology and data monitoring features, as depicted in Figures 4 and 5, and the reconfiguration functions available for each WSN. • We demonstrate data collections in each individual WSN. We present the design of this functionality and how the data are received, presented and stored in the management server. • And finally, we present the data visualization functionalities provided by the management system.
Figure 5. A screenshot of the INDAMS data monitoring for the same WSN testbed in real time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work is supported in part by National Science Foundation under grant CNS-0758372. The authors are grateful to the University of Pittsburgh team (T. Davis, G. Villalba, D. Salas, and Dr. X. Liang) for their great help, feedback, and support over the system development and field tests of the management system. REFERENCES [1]
[2] [3]
[4]
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C. Y. Chong and S. P. Kumar, “Sensor Networks: Evolution, Opportunities, and Challenges,” Proc. IEEE, vol. 91, no. 8, pp. 1247–56, 2003. Crossbow, “XServe User’s Manual”, Revision E, April 2007. A Wireless Sensor Network field study: Network deployment, installation and measurement. http://sites.google.com/site/aswpitt/ R. Jurdak, A. G. Ruzzelli, A.Barbirato, and S. Boivineau, “Octopus: monitoring, visualization, and control of sensor networks”, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 2011.
