Application framework for management and monitoring of heterogeneous 6LoWPAN deployment

Large Scale Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks require effective tools for monitoring and managing the network. In this paper, we discuss about the design and implementation of an application framework in order to monitor and manage a wireless sensor deployment, where the motes exchange IPv6 encapsulated information packets. The application framework is based on a three tier architecture with the nesC/TinyOS based firmware using 'blip' components forming the bottom layer, a middle layer implemented in Python and top layer which is a web interface created using Adobe Flex 4. The implemented features of the application framework include - sensor data acquisition and display, network activity detection of deployed motes, over-the-air programming for software re-visioning, as well as node localization and mapping. The application framework also extends to incorporate the software defined radio based gateway deployed using GNU Radio platform and Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) which enables the testbed to bridge to other heterogeneous systems.