IPSA: a novel architecture design for integrating IP and sensor networks

Recently, there is a growing interest in the design, development and deployment of sensor systems for applications of high-level inference, which leads to an increasing demand on connecting Internet Protocol (IP) network users to wireless sensor networks and accessing the available services and applications. In this paper, we first identify key requirements of designing an efficient and flexible architecture for integrating IP and sensor networks. Based on the requirements, we outline an IP and Sensor Network Integration Architecture (IPSA), which provides IP mobility support and a universal interface for IP mobile users to access sensor networks while considering application-specific requirements. With on-demand processing code assigned to the middleware layer of an IP mobile user, IPSA provides the flexibility for enabling diverse applications and manages network resources efficiently without additional requirements on sensor nodes, except for the limited additional hardware requirement at IP mobile nodes.