Assessment of Software Modeling Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) monitor environment phenomena and in some cases react in response to the observed phenomena. The distributed nature of WSNs and the interaction between software and hardware components makes it difficult to correctly design and develop WSN systems. One solution to the WSN design challenges is system modeling. In this paper we present a survey of 9 WSN modeling techniques and show how each technique models different parts of the system such as sensor behavior, sensor data and hardware. Furthermore, we consider how each modeling technique represents the network behavior and network topology. We also consider the available supporting tools for each of the modeling techniques. Based on the survey, we classify the modeling techniques and derive examples of the surveyed modeling techniques by using SensIV system.

Keywords

• Wireless sensor networks (WSN)
• Modeling
• Node
• Software design
• Hardware design