A1 Journal article (refereed)
A Statecharts-Based Approach for WSN Application Development (2020)

Hakala, I., & Tan, X. (2020). A Statecharts-Based Approach for WSN Application Development. Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks, 9(4), Article 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/jsan9040045

JYU authors or editors

Publication details

All authors or editors: Hakala, Ismo; Tan, Xinyu

Journal or series: Journal of Sensor and Actuator Networks

eISSN: 2224-2708

Publication year: 2020

Volume: 9

Issue number: 4

Article number: 45

Publisher: MDPI

Publication country: Switzerland

Publication language: English

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/jsan9040045

Publication open access: Openly available

Publication channel open access: Open Access channel

Publication is parallel published (JYX): https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/72904

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) software development challenges developers in two main ways: through system programming, which requires expertise in hardware and network management; and application programming, which requires domain-specific knowledge. However, domain programmers often lack WSN programming expertise. Likewise, system-specific programmers may find it difficult to understand domain-specific requirements. As a result, domain programmers often refrain from using WSN technology in domain-specific applications. Therefore, we propose a Finite State Machine (FSM)-based approach with an affiliated framework to decouple application functionality from WSN details. Instead of the traditional flat FSM, we use statecharts formalism because of its relaxed definition of system states. In this paper, we compare the statecharts paradigm against two basic WSN sensor node programming frameworks. The result exhibits that statecharts are an advanced paradigm in WSN application development. It motivated us to develop a statecharts framework. In our framework, we choose not to use the typical solution which converts statecharts to programming code. Instead of that, we implement a statecharts middleware associated with action libraries to interpret and actuate raw statecharts on an operating system. This approach allows domain programmers to concentrate on WSN application behavior, and system-specific programmers to focus on developing WSN services. We also introduce our statecharts middleware and present a living example with performance evaluation.

Keywords: sensor networks; software development; programming

Free keywords: statecharts; WSN; programming framework; wireless sensor; WSN application

Contributing organizations

Ministry reporting: Yes

VIRTA submission year: 2020

JUFO rating: 1