A survey on service-oriented middleware for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are used for many applications such as environmental monitoring, infrastructure security, healthcare applications, and traffic control. The design and development of such applications must address many challenges dictated by WSN characteristics on one hand and the targeted applications on the other. One of the emerging approaches used for relaxing these challenges is using service-oriented middleware (SOM). Service-oriented computing, in general, aims to make services available and easily accessible through standardized models and protocols without having to worry about the underlying infrastructures, development models, or implementation details. SOM could play an important role in facilitating the design, development, and implementation of service-oriented systems. This will help achieve interoperability, loose coupling, and heterogeneity support. Furthermore, SOM approaches will provision non-functional requirements like scalability, reliability, flexibility, and Quality of Service (QoS) assurance. This paper surveys the current work in SOM and the trends and challenges to be addressed when designing and developing these solutions for WSN.