A Development Platform for Wireless Sensor Networks with Biomedical Applications

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is a technology that will become an integral part of everyday life. It has countless potential applications in ubiquitous and pervasive computing, including those in biomedical technology and healthcare industry. As the number and variety of wireless sensor device types increase, a middleware layer capable of linking various implementations into a single programming abstraction will be needed. This paper aims to build a platform that allows users to develop WSN applications with ease, and is robust enough to support complex system development. A flexible platform based on Java and JADE (Java Agent Based Development) is proposed to handle sensor network integration and application development. Design methodology is carefully presented. A prototype implementation is described, and illustrated by an application in the healthcare domain. We believe that this work would help bridging the gaps existed among WSN researchers, application developers, and users, and is significant in realizing the full potential of WSN.