Abstract

Embedded sensor systems have been successfully implemented in a wide variety of settings, and there have been numerous research efforts that show how these sensor networks can be applied to areas ranging from education to science. These sensing systems are becoming more robust, easier to use, and widely deployed. Due to the various hardware/software platforms that are available, there is little standardization that exists in the realm of application level communication protocols, especially in the transferring or publishing of the data that is generated from sensor systems. For these sensor networks to become truly ubiquitous, there needs to be a standard protocol for the data they generate. We define a radically simple protocol, Sensor Data Stream Protocol (SDSP), to collect, move, and store sensor data. SDSP, which is built on XML as the markup language, contains references to the context of the information that is generated along with the actual values from the sensor systems. Furthermore, the protocol enables such operations as data sharing, republishing via aggregation, and concatenation. Finally, SDSP has a reference section that contains links to other sensor stores which search engines can use for discovery and ranking purposes. Overall, SDSP is a common, interoperable protocol that is designed to be handled by a range of different platforms ranging from 8-bit embedded processors to high-end cluster heads that are connected to sensor networks.

Citations