SI2-SSE: A Sustainable Wireless Sensor Software Development Framework for Science and Engineering Researchers

在过去的十年中，无线传感器网络一直是计算机工程师和科学家最热门的研究领域之一。无线传感器的使用也开始在计算机工程师和科学家以外的研究人员中流行起来。今天，传感器被用于使土木工程师能够监测公路和桥梁等日益恶化的基础设施的结构健康状况，农民可以开发精确农业技术，生态学家可以观察自然栖息地的野生动物，地震学家可以捕捉火山的地震活动，以及许多其他应用领域。然而，开发用于无线传感器的软件应用的任务对于研究人员来说是具有挑战性的，因为传感器具有有限的技术能力，并且用于传感器的软件实现需要细致的过程来提供期望水平的服务（例如，可靠性、安全性）。对于其他工程和科学领域的研究人员来说，这种情况甚至进一步恶化（例如，土木工程师和土木工程师），因为他们可能没有严格的编程背景。因此，为了方便无线传感器应用程序的设计，开发和实施，该项目提供了一个新的框架，称为PROVIZ，它集成了可视化和编程功能到一个共同的平台。PROVIZ是一个开源、平台独立、模块化和可扩展的框架，用于异构无线传感器监控和应用程序开发。它包括一组易于使用的简化语言（一个特定领域的脚本语言，一个基于图标的拖放风格的视觉语言）和一个简单的编程编辑器，用于开发无线传感器应用程序和一个机制（重新）无线传感器节点远程编程的空气通过分发生成的应用程序图像。 PROVIZ具有可视化从（1）数据包嗅探器，（2）二进制数据包跟踪文件（例如，PSD格式），以及（3）运行无线传感器应用的外部模拟器。PROVIZ还能够同时处理来自多个嗅探器的数据，以可视化大型无线传感器部署。PROVIZ将有助于科学家和工程师在许多学科（例如，土木工程、生态学、农业）。PROVIZ将使这些研究人员能够轻松地对传感器进行编程，并通过显着减少学习如何对传感器进行编程的开销来更多地关注其领域中的任务。PROVIZ项目将作为一个开源项目进行，使感兴趣的软件开发人员能够从中受益并对其进行添加。此外，PROVIZ的变体将用于向格鲁吉亚的中学少数民族学生介绍传感器网络概念。鉴于无线传感器在各种工程和科学领域的应用激增，预计PROVIZ项目的成功将有助于美国未来网络劳动力的增长。

In the last decade, wireless sensor networking has been one of the most popular research areas for computer engineers and scientists. The use of wireless sensors has also started to gain popularity among researchers other than computer engineers and scientists. Today, sensors are used to enable civil engineers to monitor the structural health of deteriorating infrastructure such as highways and bridges, farmers to develop precision-agriculture techniques, ecologists to observe wildlife in their natural habitat, geophysicists to capture seismic activity of volcanoes, and in many other application areas. However, the task of developing software applications for wireless sensors is challenging for researchers because sensors have limited technical capabilities and software implementations for sensors require meticulous procedures to provide a desired level of services (e.g., reliability, security) for applications. This situation is even further exacerbated for researchers in other fields of engineering and science (e.g., civil engineers and geophysicists) as they may not have a rigorous programming background. Therefore, to facilitate the design, development and implementation of wireless sensor applications, this project provides a new framework called PROVIZ, which integrates visualization and programming functionalities into a common platform. PROVIZ is an open-source, platform independent, modular, and extensible framework for heterogeneous wireless sensor monitoring and application development. It consists of a set of easy-to-use simplified languages (one domain specific scripting language, one icon-based drag-and-drop style visual language) and a simple programming editor for developing wireless sensor applications and a mechanism for (re)programming wireless sensor nodes remotely over-the-air by distributing the generated application image. PROVIZ has the capability to visualize wireless sensor data captured from (1) a packet sniffer, (2) a binary packet trace file (e.g., PSD format), and (3) an external simulator running a wireless sensor application. PROVIZ also has the capability to process data from multiple sniffers simultaneously to visualize a large wireless sensor deployment. PROVIZ will be instrumental to scientists and engineers working with wireless sensors in many disciplines (e.g., civil engineering, ecology, agriculture). PROVIZ will allow these researchers to easily program sensors and to focus more on the tasks in their domains by significantly reducing the overhead of learning how to program sensors. The PROVIZ project will be conducted as an open source project, enabling interested software developers to benefit from and add to it. Further, a variation of PROVIZ will be used to present sensor networking concepts to middle school underrepresented minority students in Georgia. Given the proliferation of wireless sensor utilization in various engineering and science fields, it is envisioned that the success of the PROVIZ project will help contribute to the growth of the future cyber workforce in the U.S.