An extendible metadata specification for component-oriented networks with applications to WSN configuration and optimization

Currently there is no widely accepted formalized description or metadata that represents networks, their components and interrelations between them. There is also no de facto classification of network parameters, models and services. The network community lacks a metadata specification similar to WSDL that represents networks in clear and unified manner and includes software, hardware and networking parts of the system description. This limits the advance of the frameworks aiming to assist the development of complex non-established network systems, such as wireless sensor, cognitive and heterogeneous networks. Additionally a standard metadata would enhance the interoperability and acceptance of various middleware, service discovery schemes and cross-layer optimization solutions. In this paper we suggest a simple, but comprehensive extensible metadata specification and a corresponding metamodel that allows to describe a wide range of network components and network configurations. We describe metadata and metamodel on the example of wireless sensor networks. In this field the need for standard metadata is particularly pressing due to the high number of available protocol solutions and lack of standardization.