Towards a Service Oriented Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks in Industrial Applications?

Abstract

We discuss the introduction of service oriented architectures to wireless sensor networks (WSN) in industrial applications. We give an example for a WSN architecture as applied in the EU project SOCRADES in order to explain constraints preventing a full-fledged service oriented approach. Such an approach appears to be beneficial for applications like diagnostics or monitoring where service composition can provide new functionalities. However, the limited resources in WSN must be taken into account. For control applications additional constraints like determinism or latency bound severly limit a loose coupling of services. As a consequence we propose a support by appropriate design and engineering tools.