skip to main content
research-article

Agilla: A mobile agent middleware for self-adaptive wireless sensor networks

Published:24 July 2009Publication History
Skip Abstract Section

Abstract

This article presents Agilla, a mobile agent middleware designed to support self-adaptive applications in wireless sensor networks. Agilla provides a programming model in which applications consist of evolving communities of agents that share a wireless sensor network. Coordination among the agents and access to physical resources are supported by a tuple space abstraction. Agents can dynamically enter and exit a network and can autonomously clone and migrate themselves in response to environmental changes. Agilla's ability to support self-adaptive applications in wireless sensor networks has been demonstrated in the context of several applications, including fire detection and tracking, monitoring cargo containers, and robot navigation. Agilla, the first mobile agent system to operate in resource-constrained wireless sensor platforms, was implemented on top of TinyOS. Agilla's feasibility and efficiency was demonstrated by experimental evaluation on two physical testbeds consisting of Mica2 and TelosB nodes.

References

  1. Acharya, A., Ranganathan, M., and Saltz, J. 1997. Sumatra: A language for resource-aware mobile programs. In Mobile Object Systems: Towards the Programmable Internet, J. Vitek and C. Tschudin, Eds. vol. 1222. Springer-Verlag, 111--130. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  2. Balani, R., Han, C.-C., Rengaswamy, R. K., Tsigkogiannis, I., and Srivastava, M. 2006. Multi-level software reconfiguration for sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 6th ACM&IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT'06). ACM, 112--121. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  3. Baldi, M. and Picco, G. P. 1998. Evaluating the trade-offs of mobile code design paradigms in network management applications. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE'98). IEEE Computer Society, 146--155. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  4. Baumann, J., Rothermel, H. K., Strasser, M., and Theilmann, W. 2002. Mole: A mobile agent system. Softw. Pract. Exper. 32, 6, 575--603. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  5. Bayazit, O. B., Lien, J.-M., and Amato, N. M. 2002. Roadmap-based flocking for complex environments. In Proceedings of the 10th Pacific Conference on Computer Graphics and Applications (PG'02). 104--121. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  6. Bhattacharya, S., Atay, N., Alankus, G., Lu, C., Bayazit, O. B., and Roman, G.-C. 2006. Roadmap query for sensor network assisted navigation in dynamic environments. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS), 17--36. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  7. Boulis, A., Han, C.-C., and Srivastava, M. B. 2003. Design and implementation of a framework for efficient and programmable sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services (MobiSys'03). ACM, New York, 187--200. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  8. Cabri, G., Leonardi, L., and Zambonelli, F. 2000. MARS: A programmable coordination architecture for mobile agents. Internet Comput. 4, 4, 26--35. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  9. Carbunar, B., Valente, M. T., and Vitek, J. 2004. Coordination and mobility in CoreLime. Math. Structures Comput. Sci. 14, 3, 397--419. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  10. Choi, Y.-G., Kang, J., and Nyang, D. 2007. Proactive code verification protocol in wireless sensor network. Lecture Nodes in Computer Science, vol. 4706, 6, Springer, 1085--1096. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. Crossbow Technology. 2005a. Mica2 wireless measurement system. http://www.xbow.com/Products/productdetails.aspx?sid=174.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  12. Crossbow Technology. 2005b. MicaZ wireless measurement system. http://www.xbow.com/Products/productdetails.aspx?sid=164.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  13. Cugola, G. and Picco, G. 2001. Peerware: Core middleware support for peer-to-peer and mobile systems. Tech. rep., Politecnico di Milano.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Dunkels, A., Gronvall, B., and Voigt, T. 2004. Contiki: A lightweight and flexible operating system for tiny networked sensors. In Proceedings of the 29th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN'04). IEEE Computer Society, 455--462. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Fok. C.-L. 2005. Agilla Website. http://mobilab.wustl.edu/projects/agilla.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Fok, C.-L., Roman, G.-C., and Hackmann, G. 2004. A lightweight coordination middleware for mobile computing. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages (Coordination'04), R. DeNicola et al., Eds. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 2949. Springer-Verlag, 135--151.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  17. Gelernter, D. 1985. Generative communication in Linda. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 7, 1, 80--112. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  18. Gray, R. 1997. Agent Tcl. Dr. Dobb's J. Softw. Tools 22, 3, 18--71.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  19. Hackmann, G., Fok, C.-L., Roman, G.-C., Lu, C., Zuver, C., English, K., and Meier, J. 2005. Demo abstract: Agile cargo tracking using mobile agents. In Proceedings of 3rd ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'05), 303. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Han, C.-C., Kumar, R., Shea, R., Kohler, E., and Srivastava, M. 2005. A dynamic operating system for sensor nodes. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys'05). ACM, 163--176. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Hill, J., Szewczyk, R., Woo, A., Hollar, S., Culler, D., and Pister, K. 2000. System architecture directions for networked sensors. SIGPLAN Not. 35, 11, 93--104. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. Hui, J. W. and Culler, D. 2004. The dynamic behavior of a data dissemination protocol for network programming at scale. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'04). ACM, 81--94. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Intanagonwiwat, C., Govindan, R., Estrin, D., Heidemann, J., and Silva, F. 2003. Directed diffusion for wireless sensor networking. IEEE/ACM Trans. Netw. 11, 1, 2--16. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Jeong, J. 2005. Incremental network programming for wireless sensors. M.S. thesis, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of California, Berkeley.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  25. Johansen, D., van Renesse, R., and Schneider, F. B. 1995. An introduction to the TACOMA distributed system. version 1.0. Tech. rep. 95-23, University of Tromsø, Tromsø, Norway.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Kang, P., Borcea, C., Xu, G., Saxena, A., Kremer, U., and Iftode, L. 2004. Smart messages: A distributed computing platform for networks of embedded systems. The Comput. J. (Special Issue on Mobile and Pervasive Computing). 47, 475--494.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Karlof, C., Sastry, N., and Wagner, D. 2004. Tinysec: A link layer security architecture for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'04). ACM, 162--175. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Kim, Y.-J., Govindan, R., Karp, B., and Shenker, S. 2005. Geographic routing made practical. In Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'05). USENIX Association, 217--230. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. Koshy, J. and Pandey, R. 2005. VMSTAR: Synthesizing scalable run-time environments for sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'05). ACM, 243--254. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  30. Lange, D. B. and Oshima, M. 1999. Seven good reasons for mobile agents. Comm. ACM 42, 3, 88--89. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  31. Levis, P. 2004. The tinyscript language. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pal/mate-web/files/tinyscript-manual.pdf.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  32. Levis, P. and Culler, D. 2002. Maté: A tiny virtual machine for sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS-X). ACM, 85--95. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  33. Levis, P., Gay, D., and Culler, D. 2005. Active sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 2nd Symposium on Networked Systems Design&Implementation (NSDI'05). USENIX Association, 343--356. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  34. Levis, P., Patel, N., Culler, D., and Shenker, S. 2004. Trickle: A self-regulating algorithm for code propagation and maintenance in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'04). USENIX Association, 2--2. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  35. Liu, T. and Martonosi, M. 2003. Impala: A middleware system for managing autonomic, parallel sensor systems. In Proceedings of the 9th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP'03). ACM, 107--118. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  36. Maes, P., Guttman, R. H., and Moukas, A. G. 1999. Agents that buy and sell. Comm. ACM 42, 3, 81--ff. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  37. Marsh, D., O'Kane, D., and O'Hare, G. M. P. 2005. Agents for wireless sensor network power management. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Parallel Processing Workshops (ICPPW'05). IEEE Computer Society, 413--418. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  38. Murphy, A. L., Picco, G. P., and Roman, G.-C. 2006. Lime: A coordination model and middleware supporting mobility of hosts and agents. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. 15, 3, 279--328. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  39. Murty, R., Gosain, A., Tierney, M., Brody, A., Fahad, A., Bers, J., and Welsh, M. 2007. Citysense: A vision for an urban-scale wireless networking testbed. Tech. rep. 13-07, Harvard University.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  40. Necula, G. C. 1997. Proof-carrying code. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL'97). ACM, 106--119. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  41. P.E.Clements, Papaioannou, T., and Edwards, J. 1997. Aglets: Enabling the virtual enterprise. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Managing Enterprises - Stakeholders, Engineering, Logistics and Achievement.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  42. Peine, H. and Stolpmann, T. 1997. The architecture of the Ara platform for mobile agents. In Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Mobile Agents. R. Popescu-Zeletin and K. Rothermel Eds. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1219, 50--61. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  43. Perrig, A., Stankovic, J., and Wagner, D. 2004. Security in wireless sensor networks. Comm. ACM 47, 6, 53--57. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  44. Platon, E. and Sei, Y. 2008. Security engineering in wireless sensor networks. Progress Inf. 5, 3, 49--64.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  45. Polastre, J., Szewczyk, R., and Culler, D. 2005. Telos: Enabling ultra lower-power wireless research. In Proceedings of the IPSN'05 SPOTS. ACM and IEEE, 364--369. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  46. Qi, H., Iyengar, S. S., and Chakrabarty, K. 2001a. Multi-resolution data integration using mobile agents in distributed sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybernet. -- Part C 31, 3, 383--391. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  47. Qi, H., Wang, X., Iyengar, S. S., and Chakrabarty, K. 2001b. Multi-sensor data fusion in distributed sensor networks using mobile agents. In Proceedings of 5th International Conference on Information Fusion. 11--16.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  48. Qi, H., Xu, Y., and Wang, X. 2003. Mobile-agent-based collaborative signal and information processing in sensor networks. In Proceedings of the IEEE 91, IEEE 1172--1183.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  49. Reijers, N. and Langendoen, K. 2003. Efficient code distribution in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications (WSNA'03). ACM, 60--67. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  50. Stallings, W. 2001. Operating Systems 4th, Ed. Prentice Hall.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  51. Stathopoulos, T., Heidemann, J., and Estrin, D. 2003. A remote code update mechanism for wireless sensor networks. Tech. rep. CENS-TR-30, UCLA.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  52. Tong, L., Zhao, Q., and Adireddy, S. 2003. Sensor networks with mobile agents. In Proceedings of the Military Communications International Symposium. 688--693. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  53. Tseng, Y.-C., Kuo, S.-P., Lee, H.-W., and Huang, C.-F. 2004a. Location tracking in a wireless sensor network by mobile agents and its data fusion strategies. Comput. J. 47, 4, 448--460.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  54. Tseng, Y.-C., Kuo, S.-P., Lee, W.-W., and Huang, C.-F. 2004b. Location tracking in a wireless sensor network by mobile agents and its data fusion strategies. Comput. J. 47, 4, 448--460.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  55. Tynan, R., Ruzzelli, A. G., and P., O. G. M. 2005. A methodology for the development of multi-agent systems on wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  56. Tyndall National Institute. 2005. The 25mm cube module. http://www.tyndall.ie/research/mai-group/25cube_mai.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  57. Wan, C.-Y., Campbell, A. T., and Krishnamurthy, L. 2002. PSFQ: A reliable transport protocol for wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st ACM International Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications (WSNA'02). ACM, 1--11. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  58. Welsh, M. and Mainland, G. 2004. Programming sensor networks using abstract regions. In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'04). USENIX Association, 3--3. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  59. Whitehouse, K., Sharp, C., Brewer, E., and Culler, D. 2004. Hood: A neighborhood abstraction for sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys'04). ACM, 99--110. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  60. Woo, A., Tong, T., and Culler, D. 2003. Taming the underlying challenges of reliable multi-hop routing in sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'03). ACM, 14--27. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  61. Wooldridge, M. and Jennings, N. 1995. Intelligent agents: Theory and practice. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Eng. Rev. 10, 2, 115--152.Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  62. Wu, Q., Rao, N., Barhen, J., Iyengar, S. S., Vaishnavi, V., Qi, H., and Chakrabarty, K. 2004. On computing mobile agent routes for data fusion in distributed sensor networks. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. 6, 16, 740--753. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  63. Yu, Y., Rittle, L. J., Bhandari, V., and LeBrun, J. B. 2006. Supporting concurrent applications in wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'06). ACM, 139--152. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  64. Zhao, J. and Govindan, R. 2003. Understanding packet delivery performance in dense wireless sensor networks. In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys'03). ACM, 1--13. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library

Index Terms

  1. Agilla: A mobile agent middleware for self-adaptive wireless sensor networks

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in

    Full Access

    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
      ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems  Volume 4, Issue 3
      July 2009
      109 pages
      ISSN:1556-4665
      EISSN:1556-4703
      DOI:10.1145/1552297
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2009 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 24 July 2009
      • Accepted: 1 May 2009
      • Received: 1 July 2008
      Published in taas Volume 4, Issue 3

      Permissions

      Request permissions about this article.

      Request Permissions

      Check for updates

      Qualifiers

      • research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader
    About Cookies On This Site

    We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.

    Learn more

    Got it!