Active Message Communication for Tiny Networked Sensors

TLDR

We present an implementation and evaluation of an Active Messages based communication system for tiny, wireless, networked sensors. The system comprises a device‑based operating program with a communication subsystem, dispatch loop, and AM handlers, and a host‑side communication library, and is demonstrated on an Atmel 8535 sensor and an Intel Pentium II PC. The implementation enables multi‑hop route discovery and packet delivery on silver‑dollar sized devices, and shows that TCP/IP can be applied to the Tiny Networked Sensor regime.

Abstract

We present an implementation and evaluation of an Active Messages based communication system for tiny, wireless, networked sensors. The implementation includes two major software components. The first is the device based operating program which includes the communication subsystem, dispatch loop and AM handlers. The second is a communication library for general purpose host computers. Using an Atmel 8535 based device and an Intel Pentium II PC, we demonstrate an ad hoc networking application that uses Active Message primitives for multi-hop route discovery and packet delivery on silver dollar sized devices. We also make observations about the applicability of TCP/IP to the Tiny Networked Sensor regime.