The Applications of Model Driven Architecture (MDA) in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN): Techniques and Tools

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) comprise several sensor nodes that work under certain operational constraints. The traditional software development approaches do not perform well while dealing with the complexity and real time properties of WSNs. Consequently, Model Driven Architecture (MDA) is commonly applied in WSN to verify the required system constraints in preliminary development periods. As MDA is highly suitable development approach for WSN, there is a strong need to explore and summarize the latest MDA trends in the field of WSN. Therefore, this article performs a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to identify 27 research studies available during 2013-2018. This leads to classify the recognize studies into four MDA categories and five WSN groups. Moreover, 24 available tools are identified and organized into Model-driven (10), WSN-related (9) and other (5) groups. Furthermore, 12 tools developed by the researchers through the combination of MDA and WSN concepts are presented. In addition, MDA based algorithms (2) and protocols (2) for WSN are presented. Finally, comparative analysis of developed/proposed tools is performed to analyze the benefits and limitations of MDA for WSN. It is concluded that the major MDA attributes like reusability and early design verification are fully exploited in the domain of WSN. However, it is always challenging to choose right modeling and transformation approaches due to the diverse characteristics of WSN.