This proyect introduces a novel approach to achieve a more flexible and decoupled way to provide and request sensor services supporting several gateways among sensor and enterprise domains (sometimes called multi-sink).
Purpose
Sensor networks are becoming an essential part of the ubiquitous systems and applications. However, there are not well defined protocols or mechanisms to access the sensor network from the enterprise information system.
We see that issue as an heterogeneous network interconnection problem and as a result, the same concepts may be applied. Specifically, we propose the use of object oriented middlewares to provide a Virtual Private Network in which all involved elements (sensor nodes or computer applications) will able to communicate as if all of them were in a single and uniform network.
Our approach, called UVPN (Ubiquitous Virtual Private Network), maintains the same VPN concept but it is done in an upper abstraction layer. Each host may have one or more object adapters. An object adapter is responsible to expose local application objects to the network. Each object adapter is accessible through endpoints, i.e. logical network connection points.
Examples
Below are some examples of this. This first one, shows an application where some devices notify it’s status to other nodes. There, a «current» sensor detects a change on its state, and sends the new state to a load monitor. When the system load is bigger than some threshold, the monitor emits a signal (sends a message) to other nodes. This signal can cause the node to shut down, or alert an user.
Simulation code and test may be found on https://bitbucket.org/arco_group/uvpn