CRI: Emstar: A Community Resource for Heterogeneous Embedded Sensor Network Development

无线嵌入式系统正在激活从操作系统、分布式嵌入式计算、架构、网络到信号处理、算法、数据管理的CISE研究领域，并开辟了从广域环境管理到生物医学监测的新的广泛影响应用。这些系统越来越多地集中在一个特别强大和令人兴奋的部署类别上：异构或分层传感器网络。异构传感器网络包含具有不同功能的节点，例如微小的、低功耗的“mote”和高性能的“微服务器”。mote价格低廉，长期部署不需要基础设施，但在内存、CPU能力和通信方面也受到极大限制。相比之下，微服务器在许多计算和内存密集型任务上比笔记本电脑更高效，并且更容易与高带宽外设（如高速adc和网络接口）连接；但它们较高的能源消耗需要长期部署的电力基础设施，如太阳能电池板。包含微服务器和微服务器的异构系统可以结合这两种设备的优势，使用微服务器实现所需的空间传感密度，使用微服务器实现所需的处理能力。无线嵌入式传感器系统向CISE社区提出了一系列相互交织的研究挑战：复杂和多样化现象的实时传感，带宽，能量，内存和存储受限的嵌入式计算，受控的移动性以及大量网络节点的自主协调。但是，除了这些挑战之外，实现和测试传感器网络应用程序是令人望而生畏的：许多产生低功耗、长寿命系统的限制也破坏了传统的测量和理解程序行为的方法。因此，协调的社区基础设施可以作为一个巨大的研究加速器，如果没有共享的基础设施，该领域的研究将受到严重阻碍。该项目解决了一个迫切的需求：无线传感器网络研究需要集中精力开发异构传感器系统的社区资源。研究人员将开发一个基于Emstar的社区资源，Emstar是一种用于微服务器和一般异构部署的高弹性应用程序方法。Emstar平滑地结合了仿真、仿真和部署，从而更容易定性地调试和应用程序分析。EmTOS组件无缝集成了微服务器和微服务器；EmView可视化工具提供了前所未有的无线传感器网络通信模式可见性。这将建立在Emstar原型的基础上，该原型已经证明了其在异构网络部署中的价值。通过扩展功能、集成、强化、增强可用性和长期支持，计算机和信息科学与工程社区将可以访问其广泛的工具阵列。该项目将扩展Emstar的灵活性、完整性、健壮性、文档和可编程性；通过学习目标部署（如地震阵列、移动环境传感和医疗信息学）来扩展其功能；并通过研讨会、教程和邮件列表开发一个健壮的、活跃的Emstar社区。拟议的社区资源将成为异构无线传感器网络研究的巨大加速器，能够快速彻底地探索社会重要应用，包括环境监测、医疗和公共卫生系统，以及工业和民用基础设施的开发和管理。该项目还将使用Emstar支持和开发本科和研究生水平的项目课程，并明确涉及针对代表性不足的少数民族的本科研究项目。

Wireless embedded systems are invigorating CISE research areas from operating systems, distributed embedded computing, architecture, and networking to signal processing, algorithms, and data management, and opening up new broad-impact applications ranging from wide area environmental management to biomedical monitoring. These systems are increasingly focused on a particularly powerful and exciting class of deployment: the heterogeneous or tiered sensor network. A heterogeneous sensor network contains nodes with different capabilities, such as tiny, low-power "motes" and higher-powered, "microservers". Motes are inexpensive and require no infrastructure for long-term deployments, but also extremely constrained in memory, CPU power, and communication. Microservers, in contrast, are more efficient than motes at many computation- and memory-intensive tasks, and more readily interfaced to high-bandwidth peripherals, such as high-rate ADCs and network interfaces; but their higher energy consumption requires power infrastructure, such as solar panels, in long-term deployments. A heterogeneous system containing both motes and microservers can combine the advantages of both devices, using motes to achieve the desired spatial sensing density and microservers to achieve the desired processing power. Wireless embedded sensor systems present the CISE community with an array of intertwined research challenges: real time sensing of complex and diverse phenomena, embedded computing constrained in bandwidth, energy, memory, and storage, controlled mobility, and the autonomous coordination of vast numbers of network nodes. But implementing and testing sensor network applications is daunting even aside from these challenges: many of the constraints that yield low-power, long-lifetime systems also undermine traditional methods for instrumenting and understanding program behavior. Coordinated community infrastructure can thus act as a tremendous research accelerator, and without shared infrastructure, research in the field will be significantly hampered. This project addresses a pressing need: wireless sensor network research demands a concentrated effort to develop a community resource for heterogeneous sensor systems.The investigators will develop a community resource based on Emstar, a highly resilient application methodology for microservers and general heterogeneous deployments. Emstar smoothly combines simulation, emulation, and deployment, leading to qualitatively easier debugging and application analysis. An EmTOS component seamlessly integrates motes and microservers; the EmView visualizer provides unprecedented visibility into wireless sensor network communication patterns.This will build on the investigators Emstar prototype which has proven its value in deployments of heterogeneous networks.With expanded functionality, integration, hardening, enhanced usability, and longer-term support, its broad array of tools will become accessible to the computer and information science and engineering community. The project will expand Emstar's flexibility, completeness, robustness, documentation, and programmability; extend its functionality by learning from targeted deployments such as seismic arrays, mobile environmental sensing, and medical informatics; and develop a robust, active Emstar community through workshops, tutorials, and mailing lists. The proposed community resource will act as a tremendous accelerator for research into heterogeneous wireless sensor networks, enabling quick and thorough exploration of socially important applications including environmental monitoring, medical and public health systems, and industrial and civic infrastructure development and management. The project will also support and develop undergraduate and graduate level project courses using Emstar, and explicitly involve an undergraduate research program targeting underrepresented minorities.