A Web Service-based Communication Architecture for Smartphone/WPAN Sensor Ensembles

There are many applications that use low power wireless sensors to monitor people's vital signs or the environment around people. For mobile applications, smartphones with Internet access have become a commonly used tool to make this data remotely accessible. However, the yet presented architectures are quite complex and lack flexibility. Our aim was to investigate how existing communication architectures for smartphone/WPAN sensor ensembles can be simplified and to provide a transparent solution where the smartphone doesn't require knowledge about sensors for which it serves as an Internet gateway. We therefore present an IP-based communication architecture, that allows applications to easily integrate remote sensor data of mobile users based on existing Internet standards. In particular, our solution provides simple Web service-based APIs and does not require the smartphone to process sensor data. Instead, the smartphone becomes a transparent gateway as it only forwards IP packets.