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Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

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Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have found more and more applications in a variety of pervasive computing environments. However, how to support the development, maintenance, deployment and execution of applications over WSNs remains to be a nontrivial and challenging task, mainly because of the gap between the high level requirements from pervasive computing applications and the underlying operation of WSNs. Middleware for WSN can help bridge the gap and remove impediments. In recent years, research has been carried out on WSN middleware from different aspects and for different purposes. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing work on WSN middleware, seeking for a better understanding of the current issues and future directions in this field. We propose a reference framework to analyze the functionalities of WSN middleware in terms of the system abstractions and the services provided. We review the approaches and techniques for implementing the services. On the basis of the analysis and by using a feature tree, we provide taxonomy of the features of WSN middleware and their relationships, and use the taxonomy to classify and evaluate existing work. We also discuss open problems in this important area of research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230027, China

    Miao-Miao Wang & Jing Li

  2. Internets and Mobile Computing Lab, Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

    Miao-Miao Wang & Jian-Nong Cao

  3. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, U.S.A.

    Sajal K. Dasi

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  1. Miao-Miao Wang
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  2. Jian-Nong Cao
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  3. Jing Li
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Correspondence to Miao-Miao Wang.

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Supported by Hong Kong Polytechnic University under the ICRG Grant No. G-YE57, Hong Kong RGC under the Grant of A Research Center Ubiquitous Computing, and the National Hi-Tech Development 863 Program of China under Grant No. 2006AA01Z231.

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Wang, MM., Cao, JN., Li, J. et al. Middleware for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey. J. Comput. Sci. Technol. 23, 305–326 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-008-9135-x

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