SenNet: A Programming Toolkit to Develop Wireless Sensor Network Applications

One of the reasons that Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) applications are not widely available is the complexity in their development. This is a consequence of the complex nature in low-level details, which a developer must manage. The vast majority of the present application developments are done using node-centric low-level languages, for example, C. In order to make the WSN technology more universal; application development complexity nature should be reduced, and development efficiency increased. This paper describes SenNet language, which is a new approach to WSN application development using a Domain-Specific Language (DSL). SenNet empowers application developers to focus on modelling the application logic using domain specific terms. The new approach gives the ability to write applications using multi-levels of abstraction (i.e. network, group, and node-level). Evaluation results show that SenNet decreases the cognitive effort required for learning WSN application development in addition to the time required to write the application by using automated code generation from abstracted language commands.