A framework for time-controlled and portable WSN applications

Body sensor network applications require a large amount of data to be communicated over radio frequency. The radio transceiver is
typically the largest source of power dissipation; improvements on energy
consumption can thus be achieved by enabling on-node processing to reduce the number of packets to be transmitted. On-node processing
is facilitated by a timely control over process execution to sequence operations on data; yet, the latter must be enabled while keeping highlevel software abstracted from both underlying software and hardware
intricacies to accommodate portability to the wide range of hardware and software platforms. We investigated the challenges of implementing software services for on-node processing and devised constructs and
system abstractions that integrate applications, drivers, time synchronization
and MAC functionality into a system software which presents limited dependency between components and enables timely control of
processes. We support our claims with a performance evaluation of the software tools implemented within the FreeRTOS micro-kernel.