On-line testing of sensor networks: A case study

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks are nowadays employed in several applications. Cyber-physical systems, health-care instruments and Internet of Things are using hundreds of smart sensors, which include also processing capability together with sophisticated communication protocols. The presence of faults in these critical applications must be checked during runtime, to detect transient and permanent faults that could seriously affect the entire system dependability and endanger human users. Continuous checking has been proven as inefficient in many cases, due to the low degrees of observability and controllability and to the limited life time of batteries. Even, on-line testing is often unable to report the presence of internal errors, which can remain latent during long times. In this paper, a proposal is presented for improving the on-line testability of the different type of nodes in a WSN, saving energy and tracking error from their origin.