Operating Systems for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey Technical Report

The design of operating system for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) deviates from traditional operating system design due to significant and specific characteristics like constrained resources, high dynamics and inaccessible deployment. We provide a classification framework that surveys the state of the art in WSN operating systems (OS). The purpose of this survey is two-fold one is to classify existing operating systems according to important OS features and and the other is to suggest suitable OSs for different categories of WSN applications mapping the application requirements and OS features. Architecture, Execution Model, Reprogramming, Scheduling and Power Management are the important OS features that are chosen to classify the existing WSN operating systems. The classification helps in understanding the contrasting differences of existing operating systems and lays the foundation for designing an ideal operating system. To help the application developer in choosing the right OS, based on the application requirement, we also classified existing WSN applications. This classification gives insight in choosing the best suitable operating systems that fits for a category of application.

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