Servilla: A Flexible Service Provisioning Middleware for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

Device heterogeneity in wireless sensor networks is rendering such networks increasingly difficult to program. To address this problem, the authors present Servilla, a novel middleware that enables applications to be both platform-independent and efficient despite executing over a diverse and dynamic set of devices. It achieves this by using service-oriented computing and requiring all platform-specific functionality be encapsulated behind services, which are dynamically discovered by applications. Novel forms of service bindings and invocation semantics enable flexible yet energy-efficient in-network collaboration among heterogeneous devices. To support a wide range of devices, Servilla introduces the concept of middleware asymmetry, enabling resource-constrained devices to only provide services that can be leveraged by more powerful devices running applications.