Integrating Wireless Sensor Networks into Enterprise Information Systems by Using Web Services

Abstract

This paper proposes an advanced middleware solution to the problem of integrating a wireless sensor network into the information system of an enterprise at a high abstraction level. This is achieved by using the proposed middleware which provides to the wireless sensors a service oriented architecture connection to the Internet. The proposed middleware is based on the device profile for Web services which is a service oriented architecture technology at the device level. Since this technology is based on exchanging extensible markup language documents, a technique is utilized which compresses and reduces the data volume of such documents at a level that can be handled by the use of the resource constrained environment of the wireless sensors. By utilizing the proposed middleware which implements only the basic functions of the device profile for Web services, we demonstrate how such a wireless sensor network can be connected to the Internet achieving in this way its integration into an enterprise information system in which all its components conform to a service oriented architecture standard.