The LiteOS Operating System: Towards Unix-Like Abstractions for Wireless Sensor Networks

This paper presents LiteOS, a multi-threaded operating system that provides Unix-like abstractions for wireless sensor networks. Aiming to be an easy-to-use platform, LiteOS offers a number of novel features, including: (1) a hierarchical file system and a wireless shell interface for user interaction using UNIX-like commands; (2) kernel support for dynamic loading and native execution of multithreaded applications; and (3) online debugging, dynamic memory, and file system assisted communication stacks. LiteOS also supports software updates through a separation between the kernel and user applications, which are bridged through a suite of system calls. Besides the features that have been implemented, we also describe our perspective on LiteOS as an enabling platform. We evaluate the platform experimentally by measuring the performance of common tasks, and demonstrate its programmability through twenty-one example applications.

[1]  Robert Szewczyk,et al.  System architecture directions for networked sensors , 2000, ASPLOS IX.

[2]  Kay Römer,et al.  Beyond event handlers: programming wireless sensors with attributed state machines , 2005, IPSN 2005. Fourth International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, 2005..

[3]  David E. Culler,et al.  The nesC language: A holistic approach to networked embedded systems , 2003, PLDI.

[4]  John Regehr,et al.  Eliminating stack overflow by abstract interpretation , 2003, TECS.

[5]  R. Kling,et al.  The Intel/sup /spl reg// mote platform: a Bluetooth-based sensor network for industrial monitoring , 2005, IPSN 2005. Fourth International Symposium on Information Processing in Sensor Networks, 2005..

[6]  Sasikanth Avancha,et al.  Security for Sensor Networks , 2004 .

[7]  Peter Desnoyers,et al.  Capsule: an energy-optimized object storage system for memory-constrained sensor devices , 2006, SenSys '06.

[8]  Adam Dunkels,et al.  Contiki - a lightweight and flexible operating system for tiny networked sensors , 2004, 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks.

[9]  Michael Neufeld,et al.  ELF: an efficient log-structured flash file system for micro sensor nodes , 2004, SenSys '04.

[10]  David E. Culler,et al.  Incremental network programming for wireless sensors , 2004, 2004 First Annual IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks, 2004. IEEE SECON 2004..

[11]  David E. Culler,et al.  Software design patterns for TinyOS , 2007, TECS.

[12]  Jeff Rose,et al.  MANTIS OS: An Embedded Multithreaded Operating System for Wireless Micro Sensor Platforms , 2005, Mob. Networks Appl..

[13]  Jie Liu,et al.  Challenges in Building a Portal for Sensors World-Wide , 2006 .

[14]  Sang Hyuk Son,et al.  EnviroTrack: towards an environmental computing paradigm for distributed sensor networks , 2004, 24th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, 2004. Proceedings..

[15]  Yong Wang,et al.  Energy-efficient computing for wildlife tracking: design tradeoffs and early experiences with ZebraNet , 2002, ASPLOS X.

[16]  Koen Langendoen,et al.  Efficient code distribution in wireless sensor networks , 2003, WSNA '03.

[17]  John A. Stankovic,et al.  t-kernel: providing reliable OS support to wireless sensor networks , 2006, SenSys '06.

[18]  Nigamanth Sridhar,et al.  Abstractions for safe concurrent programming in networked embedded systems , 2006, SenSys '06.

[19]  Wei Hong,et al.  The design of an acquisitional query processor for sensor networks , 2003, SIGMOD '03.

[20]  Anthony Rowe,et al.  Nano-RK: an energy-aware resource-centric RTOS for sensor networks , 2005, 26th IEEE International Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'05).

[21]  Mani B. Srivastava,et al.  A dynamic operating system for sensor nodes , 2005, MobiSys '05.