A software-based fault detection scheme for wireless sensor networks

Recently, wireless sensor networks are being increasingly integrated with consumer electronic devices to deliver more intelligent services. Usually, the wireless sensor networks are expected to provide continuous, unattended service for months or even years. However, hardware reliability poses a major challenge to this expectation. To address this issue, this paper designs and implements a software-based minimal-overhead fault detection method to detect failures in various hardware components. The fault detection scheme has been implemented in the SOS kernel on the sensor nodes. Experimental results indicate that except for the memory access trap, most failures can be successfully detected through low-cost software detectors.