Memory optimization, real-time scheduling, energy conservation, reprogramming, context awareness, and fault tolerance are the critical research challenges in the wireless sensor network (WSN). To address these challenges, a new WSN operating system (OS) LiveOS is designed and implemented in this chapter. Compared with the other WSN OSes, LiveOS has two typical features. On the one hand, the new OS design concepts such as the hybrid scheduling, the shared-stack scheduling, the reactive-defragmentation allocation, and the pre-linked native-code middleware are implemented. By doing this, the memory cost of the real-time WSN OS can be decreased. Moreover, the reprogramming performance of the WSN nodes can be improved. On the other hand, the new research approach, which addresses the WSN challenges by combining both the software technique and the multi-core hardware technique, is applied in LiveOS. By means of the multi-core hardware infrastructure, the lifetime of the LiveOS node can be prolonged. Moreover, the context-aware ability, the real-time performance, and the fault-tolerant capability of the WSN nodes can be improved. With the implementation of the above concepts, LiveOS becomes the WSN OS which can be applied on the resource-constrained WSN nodes and can be used to execute the real-time WSN applications with high reliability.

Chapter Contents:

• Abstract
• 3.1 Introduction
• 3.2 LiveOS memory-efficient real-time scheduling
• 3.2.1 Hybrid scheduling
• 3.2.2 Shared-stack multithreading
• 3.2.3 Performance evaluation
• 3.2.4 Discussion
• 3.3 LiveOS reactive-defragmentation dynamic memory allocation
• 3.3.1 LiveOS reactive-defragmentation allocation mechanism
• 3.3.2 Performance evaluation
• 3.3.3 Discussion
• 3.4 LiveOS middleware for user-friendly application development environment
• 3.4.1 LiveOS memory-efficient and energy-efficient middleware LiMid
• 3.4.2 Performance evaluation
• 3.5 LiveOS multi-core task assignment for the energy conservation
• 3.5.1 Concept of the LiveOS multi-core energy conservation mechanism
• 3.5.2 Performance evaluation
• 3.6 LiveOS multi-core task assignment to improve the real-time performance
• 3.7 LiveOS multi-core technique for the context-aware applications
• 3.8 LiveOS multi-core fault-tolerant mechanism
• 3.8.1 Concept and implementation of the LiveOS multi-core fault-tolerant platform
• 3.8.2 Experimental evaluation
• 3.9 LiveOS multi-core debugging mechanism
• 3.9.1 Traditional debugging approaches
• 3.9.2 Concept and implementation of the LiveOS multi-core debugging approach
• 3.10 Discussion on the LiveOS design concepts
• 3.11 Conclusions and ongoing works
• Acknowledgments
• References

Inspec keywords: operating systems (computers); telecommunication computing; energy conservation; telecommunication scheduling; wireless sensor networks; telecommunication power management; fault tolerant computing; telecommunication network reliability

Other keywords: multicore hardware technique; wireless sensor network operating system; energy conservation; real-time scheduling; memory optimization; multicore hardware infrastructure; software technique; fault tolerance; reprogramming performance; context awareness; wireless sensor network reliability; WSN OS LiveOS node

Subjects: Reliability; Wireless sensor networks; Telecommunication systems (energy utilisation); Communications computing; Operating systems