Agimone: Middleware Support for Seamless Integration of Sensor and IP Networks

The scope of wireless sensor network (WSN) applications has traditionally been restricted by physical sensor coverage and limited computational power. Meanwhile, IP networks like the Internet offer tremendous connectivity and computing resources. This paper presents Agimone, a middleware layer that integrates sensor and IP networks as a uniform platform for flexible application deployment. This layer allows applications to be deployed on the WSN in the form of mobile agents which can autonomously discover and migrate to other WSNs, using a common IP backbone as a bridge. Agimone is the first system that allows mobile agents to migrate between sensor and IP networks. It facilitates data sharing between WSNs and the IP network through remote tuple space operations, allowing sensors to easily defer expensive computations to more-powerful devices. We demonstrate the expressiveness of Agimone’s programming model by examining a prototype cargo-tracking application. We also provide an empirical evaluation that demonstrates the efficiency of Agimone using two WSNs consisting of Mica2 motes connected by an IP network.