Design techniques for sensor appliances: foundations and light compass case study

Abstract

We propose the first systematic, sensor-centric approach for quantitative design of sensor network appliances. We demonstrate its use by designing light appliance devices and the associated middleware. We have developed five models which are required to make this problem tractable and to undertake the challenging task of designing light sensor appliances: i. physical world, ii. light sensor, iii. physical phenomenon, iv. appliance design, and v. computational model. With these models in place, we present the new design methodology that consists of two main steps: 1. a procedure for placement of individual sensors of the appliances, and 2. error minimization-based sensor data interpretation middleware. We have developed new optimization techniques for both tasks. A portable light sensor system was designed using the optimization intensive procedure, and its effectiveness demonstrated.