Scriptable virtual onboard sensors for conducting post-deployment drills in wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be extensively tested, before being deployed, using simulators and testbeds. However, it is equally important to be able to test a WSN system after it has been deployed, to verify that it will work as expected when certain conditions of interest apply. To this end, we present a script-based mechanism for letting nodes produce artificial sensor values, transparently to the application. The user can write and upload scripts, and activate/deactivate script execution for selected nodes and sensors, at any point in time, without changing the node firmware. Our implementation requires little memory and has negligible runtime overhead, thus can be adopted for resource-constrained nodes.