Abstract
Wireless Sensor Networks are moving out of the laboratory and into the field. For a number of reasons there is often a need to update sensor node software, or node configuration, after deployment. The need for over-the-air updates is driven both by the scale of deployments, and by the remoteness and inaccessibility of sensor nodes. This need has been recognized since the early days of sensor networks, and research results from the related areas of mobile networking and distributed systems have been applied to this area. In order to avoid any manual intervention, the update process needs to be autonomous. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of software updating in Wireless Sensor Networks, and analyses the features required to make these updates autonomous. A new taxonomy of software update features and a new model for fault detection and recovery are presented. The paper concludes by identifying the lacunae relating to autonomous software updates, providing direction for future research.
Highlights
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are formed from collections of sensing nodes, placed in a sensor field, that collect environmental data and report it via a gateway or base-station to an application.Typically the nodes are energy constrained, and the major focus of research is how to balance acceptable level of performances against network lifetime
WSN software update research is described here based on the three categories identified in [1]: the protocols for disseminating the update, reducing the traffic required for the disseminated updates, and the sensor node execution environment, along with an additional category: fault detection and recovery
The new Software Update Taxonomy presented in the paper, the feature comparison in the context of this taxonomy, the focus on autonomous behavior, and the breadth, differentiate it from previous surveys
Summary
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are formed from collections of sensing nodes, placed in a sensor field, that collect environmental data and report it via a gateway or base-station to an application. There has been comparatively little research into post-deployment issues, but these are becoming more important as real-world deployments are being realized. These issues include debugging, fault isolation, and software updating. A lack of published results in the many reported deployments led us to speculate that there is not sufficient support for this feature, and that such updates may be regarded as too risky as, if the updated software fails an expensive network, it may become inoperative. This paper extends an earlier technical report [5], and identifies key future research challenges for autonomic software and configuration updates (SCU)—the lacunae in current research. In addition to the survey, the key contributions of this paper are: a model for autonomous software updating, a taxonomy for classifying software update features, a model for fault detection and recovery, and the identification of future research topics in the area of autonomous software and configuration updates
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