Citation
Elaine Cheong. "Actor-Oriented Programming for Wireless Sensor Networks". PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley, August, 2007.

Abstract
Wireless sensor networks is an emerging area of embedded systems that has the potential to revolutionize our lives at home and at work, with wide-ranging applications, including environmental monitoring and conservation, manufacturing and industrial control, business asset management, seismic and structural monitoring, transportation, health care, and home automation. Building sensor networks today requires piecing together a variety of hardware and software components, each with different design methodologies and tools, making it a challenging and error-prone process. In this dissertation, I advocate using an actor-oriented approach to designing, generating, programming, and simulating wireless sensor network applications. Actor-oriented programming provides a common high-level language that unifies the programming interface between the operating system, node-centric, middleware, and macroprogramming layers of a sensor network application. This dissertation presents the TinyGALS (Globally Asynchronous, Locally Synchronous) programming model, which is built on the TinyOS programming model. TinyGALS is implemented in the galsC programming language, which provides constructs to systematically build concurrent tasks called actors. The galsC compiler toolsuite provides high-level type checking and code generation facilities and allows developers to deploy actor-oriented programs on actual sensor node hardware. This dissertation then describes Viptos (Visual Ptolemy and TinyOS), a joint modeling and design environment for wireless networks and sensor node software. Viptos is built on Ptolemy II, an actor-oriented graphical modeling and simulation environment for embedded systems, and TOSSIM, an interrupt-level discrete-event simulator for TinyOS networks. This dissertation also presents methods for using higher-order actors with various metaprogramming and generative programming techniques that enable wireless sensor network application developers to create high-level, parameterizable descriptions and automatically generate sensor network simulation scenarios from these models. All of the tools I developed and describe in this dissertation are open-source and freely available on the web. The networked embedded computing community can use these tools and the knowledge shared in this dissertation to improve the way we program wireless sensor networks.

Electronic downloads

• http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2007/EECS-2007-112.html

• HTML

  Elaine Cheong. <a
  href="http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/777.html"
  ><i>Actor-Oriented Programming for Wireless Sensor
  Networks</i></a>, PhD thesis,  University of
  California, Berkeley, August, 2007.

• Plain text

  Elaine Cheong. "Actor-Oriented Programming for Wireless
  Sensor Networks". PhD thesis,  University of
  California, Berkeley, August, 2007.

• BibTeX

  @phdthesis{Cheong07_ActorOrientedProgrammingForWirelessSensorNetworks,
      author = {Elaine Cheong},
      title = {Actor-Oriented Programming for Wireless Sensor
                Networks},
      school = {University of California, Berkeley},
      month = {August},
      year = {2007},
      abstract = {Wireless sensor networks is an emerging area of
                embedded systems that has the potential to
                revolutionize our lives at home and at work, with
                wide-ranging applications, including environmental
                monitoring and conservation, manufacturing and
                industrial control, business asset management,
                seismic and structural monitoring, transportation,
                health care, and home automation. Building sensor
                networks today requires piecing together a variety
                of hardware and software components, each with
                different design methodologies and tools, making
                it a challenging and error-prone process. In this
                dissertation, I advocate using an actor-oriented
                approach to designing, generating, programming,
                and simulating wireless sensor network
                applications. Actor-oriented programming provides
                a common high-level language that unifies the
                programming interface between the operating
                system, node-centric, middleware, and
                macroprogramming layers of a sensor network
                application. This dissertation presents the
                TinyGALS (Globally Asynchronous, Locally
                Synchronous) programming model, which is built on
                the TinyOS programming model. TinyGALS is
                implemented in the galsC programming language,
                which provides constructs to systematically build
                concurrent tasks called actors. The galsC compiler
                toolsuite provides high-level type checking and
                code generation facilities and allows developers
                to deploy actor-oriented programs on actual sensor
                node hardware. This dissertation then describes
                Viptos (Visual Ptolemy and TinyOS), a joint
                modeling and design environment for wireless
                networks and sensor node software. Viptos is built
                on Ptolemy II, an actor-oriented graphical
                modeling and simulation environment for embedded
                systems, and TOSSIM, an interrupt-level
                discrete-event simulator for TinyOS networks. This
                dissertation also presents methods for using
                higher-order actors with various metaprogramming
                and generative programming techniques that enable
                wireless sensor network application developers to
                create high-level, parameterizable descriptions
                and automatically generate sensor network
                simulation scenarios from these models. All of the
                tools I developed and describe in this
                dissertation are open-source and freely available
                on the web. The networked embedded computing
                community can use these tools and the knowledge
                shared in this dissertation to improve the way we
                program wireless sensor networks.},
      URL = {http://chess.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/777.html}
  }
  

Posted by Christopher Brooks on 13 Nov 2010.
Groups: ptolemy
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