VectorL: a macroprogramming language for testing wireless sensor network applications

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained world-wide attention in recent years and are expected to find wide applicability and increasing deployment in the near future. These networks are consisted of small sensors, with limited processing and computing resources. Thus, the considerable cost of deploying and maintaining large-scale WSNs for experimental purposes makes simulation a necessary phase of the application development cycle. Sensor node actions are triggered by the information they sense, measure and gather from the environment. Therefore, physical process modeling and simulation is an integral part of a realistic application simulation. Though, sensing is usually neglected in WSN simulators. The usual practice is to feed random numbers to nodes or each node to have a static value. The purpose of this master thesis is to introduce VectorL, a high-level domain-specific language designed to serve the need for an effective and simple way to model and simulate external environment in order to produce realistic sensor readings. Another great advantage of VectorL is that it can be used, not only during simulation phase, but also during wsn testing phase, inside the motes.