Evaluation and Enhancement of a Unifying Link Abstraction for Sensornets

SP has been proposed as a unifying abstraction or “narrow waist” for the SensorNet Architecture. An early prototype demonstrated the ability to allow multiple network protocols to co-exist and mutually benefit by sharing common resources without the drawback of larger program size or lesser performance. However, the early implementation failed to address the policy of resource sharing between network protocols, did not permit coexisting link layers, was evaluated on a limited scope of controlled experiments, and lacked the capability to evolve with evaluation, hindering broad adoption by the sensornet community. We provide a concrete and stable system that fully enables resource sharing among multiple concurrent network and link protocols, is easily portable to existing protocols and flexible to accommodate future protocols, and modularizes the policy engine of SP to enrich the control available to system designers, all while remaining competitive in the size of program and memory footprints. By enabling the community to evaluate and explore protocol interoperability, SP promotes code factorization and reuse, facilitating development of protocols and systems with expanded capabilities, enhanced performance, and greater energy-efficiency.