Toward a generic and secure software platform for sensor network nodes

Small wireless nodes in sensor networks are increasing being deployed in a wide variety of applications. In this paper, we present ActiveBeans, a generic and secure software platform in a small wireless node employing the Java technologies for data management and sensorlactuator control applications inside a building. Small wireless nodes have been deployed everywhere, and have been used to manage data for applications, perform operations using the data or control sensorlactuator attached to the node. To deal with management data items and controlled devices in a node in a uniform manner, we introduce a node description in the XML format. ActiveBeans provides a Java software platform to access the node description securely. ActiveBeans has the following features: a small Java virtual machine with small foot-print management for various input and output device using the generic framework, the data management, and the fine-grained access control. To decrease the Java program size, a generator customizes and optimizes the access control module in a host machine, which is downloaded into the node with a lightweight wireless management protocol.