State Machine Based Operating System Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

A wireless sensor network is characterized as a massively distributed and deeply embedded system. Such a system requires concurrent and asynchronous event handling as a distributed system and resource-consciousness as an embedded system. State machine based software design techniques are capable of satisfying exactly these requirements. In this paper, we present how to design a compact and efficient operating system for wireless sensor nodes based on a finite state machine. We describe how this operating system can operate in an extremely resource constrained sensor node while providing the required con-currency, reactivity, and reconfigurability. We also show some important bene-fits implied by this architecture.