A Network Application Programming Interface for Data Processing in Sensor Networks

Since the inception of sensor networks, a wide variety of algorithms for in-network data processing have emerged. To en-able practical implementation of a broad class of these pro-posed algorithms, sufficient application programming sup-port for network communications is critical. While standard (but relatively low-level) network Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) such as those implemented in TinyOS can provide a basis for flexible application-specific customization, experience in the past several years has shown that data processing algorithms in fact share similar higher level communication needs that can be better supported.