Domain-Specific Languages for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Programming wireless sensor networks is difficult. Using low-level languages like C or Assembler requires detailed knowledge about the hardware and its limitations. The behavior of a sensor node has to be described in terms of memory addresses, registers, and very basic data manipulation operations. Domain-specific languages help to ease the programming. They raise the programming abstraction and, for instance, allow to describe a sensor node’s behavior in terms of current sensor values and sensor value change events. By abstracting from low-level details, a domain-specific language may even enable domain-experts to describe the behavior of a wireless sensor network. The goal of my thesis is to develop and evaluate an approach for defining domain-specific languages for wireless sensor networks and for simulating, compiling, and executing programs formulated in these domain-specific languages.