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得到普及。如今，传感器被用于土木工程师监测高速公路和桥梁等日益恶化的基础设施的结构健康状况，农民开发精准农业技术，生态学家观察自然栖息地的野生动物，地球物理学家捕捉火山的地震活动，以及许多其他应用领域。然而，为无线传感器开发软件应用程序的任务对研究人员来说是具有挑战性的，因为传感器的技术能力有限，传感器的软件实现需要细致的程序来为应用程序提供所需的服务水平（例如，可靠性，安全性）。对于其他工程和科学领域的研究人员（例如土木工程师和地球物理学家）来说，这种情况甚至更加严重，因为他们可能没有严格的编程背景。因此，为了促进无线传感器应用的设计、开发和实现，该项目提供了一个名为PROVIZ的新框架，它将可视化和编程功能集成到一个公共平台中。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（一种特定于领域的脚本语言，一种基于图标的拖放风格的视觉语言）和一个用于开发无线传感器应用程序的简单编程编辑器，以及一种通过分发生成的应用程序图像来远程（重新）编程无线传感器节点的机制。PROVIZ有能力可视化从(1)数据包嗅探器，(2)二进制数据包跟踪文件（例如，PSD格式）和(3)运行无线传感器应用程序的外部模拟器捕获的无线传感器数据。PROVIZ还具有同时处理来自多个嗅探器的数据的能力，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）中使用无线传感器。PROVIZ将使这些研究人员能够轻松地对传感器进行编程，并通过大大减少学习如何编程传感器的开销，将更多的精力集中在他们领域的任务上。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添加到该项目中。此外，PROVIZ的一种变体将用于向佐治亚州代表性不足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.