Resource Aware Process Migration in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

This thesis presents a novel architecture for native process migration (PM) in wireless sensors networks (WSN) without the use of virtual execution environment. Resources in WSN are scarce, therefore creating a virtual execution environment for processes so that they can be migrated, put an extra burden on already constrained resources. The proposed architecture for process migration allows live native processes to be migrated during execution. The process migration architecture takes migration decisions by continuously monitoring resources including remaining battery life and free memory space on a node. The architecture is suitable for networks with fewer expensive sensor nodes as it allows for better utilization of network resources. Transferring a live executing process helps in meeting processing demands dynamically, improves fault tolerance and resource utilization, and allows easier network management in WSN. The proposed architecture supports resourcing monitoring, request broadcasting and response collection, target node selection, process code and state transfer, and restoration of native process at the target node. Implementation of proposed architecture has been successfully tested on COOJA simulator and a test-bed of TelosB motes. The final implementation has been compared to agent based systems and virtual machine architectures. It shows a remarkable improvement in runtime energy efficiency and executable code size.