Middleware for Adaptive Group Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

While the size and heterogeneity of wireless sensor networks confirm the need and benefit of group communication, an intelligent approach that exploits the interaction pattern and network context is still missing. This paper introduces sensor middleware to dynamically select the most efficient alternative from a set of group communication mechanisms. The proposed solution leverages on an empirical analysis of the ODMRP multicast protocol and was evaluated by a proof-of-concept prototype running on the SunSPOT platform. Results show that network overhead is considerably reduced when using the sensor middleware for software deployment, reconfiguration and periodic data monitoring.