USN Metadata Definition and Metadata Management System for Ubiquitous Sensor Network

The goal of Ubiquitous Sensor Network(USN) environments is to provide users high quality services based on a variety of sensors. In this environment, sensor devices, sensor nodes and sensor networks are heterogeneous and have various characteristics. Therefore it is important for interoperability to define a metadata for describing USN resources. The OGC(Open Geospatial Consortium) proposes SensorML(Sensor Model Language) as a standard language for modeling sensors. However, SensorML provides a framework for describing a processing model among sensors rather than describing information of sensors. Therefore, to describe a USN metadata is not main purposes of SensorML. This paper defines a USN metadata which describes information about sensor device, sensor node, and sensor network. Also the paper proposes a method for efficiently storing and searching the USN metadata and implements a USN metadata management system based on our method. We show that our metadata management system is reasonable for managing the USN metadata through performance evaluation. Our USN metadata keeps the interoperability in USN environments because the metadata is designed on SensorML. The USN metadata management system can be used directly for a USN middleware or USN application.