ETH Zurich : Computer Science : Pervasive Computing : Distributed Systems : Research : SNIF

SNIF - Sensor Network Inspection Framework

A Research Project of the Distributed Systems Group

The goal of this project is to provide a framework for passive observation and inspection of deployed Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). It consists of a distributed sniffer, a new package description language and a data stream engine with multiple operators. The distributed sniffer is used to overhear the radio communication of the WSN. Using a data-stream-based analysis framework, parts of the nodes' internal state can be inferred and monitored to help debugging and optimizing of the application.

The distributed sniffer is implemented using an additional deployment-support network (DSN). We are using a generic receive-only MAC layer on the BTnode sensor node to overhear WSN traffic. The collected messages are pre-processed and sent to the DSN sink over the Bluetooth radio interface. For Bluetooth networking, the JAWS infrastructure is used.

Our new package description language allows the generic description and decoding of encapsulated data structures and is based on the C programming language already used for the WSN application development.

The data-stream analysis framework contains both standard data-stream operators such as Mapper, ArrayIterator (to process array elements in data structures), Union, Filter and TimeWindowAggregator (calculates aggregate over elements within a time interval) and specific operators that deals with various WSN specific issues such as the reconstruction of the sender IDs, the validation of sequence numbers and the analysis of multi-hop paths and network partition detection.

Availability

See also the following related items:

• Sensor Networks (topic)
• BTnodes (demo)

Selected Publications

See the Publications of the Distributed Systems Group page for a full listing of our publications.

• Kay Römer, Matthias Ringwald
  The Deployment of Sensor Networks.
  In: Florence Luy (Ed.): National Center of Competence in Research for Mobile Information and Communication Systems (NCCR-MICS) Newsletter, pp. 2-4, February 2008
  BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Matthias Ringwald, Kay Römer
  Practical Time Synchronization for Bluetooth Scatternets.
  Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Broadband Communications, Networks, and Systems (BROADNETS 2007). Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, September 2007
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  Invited paper
  
  
• Matthias Ringwald, Kay Römer
  Deployment of Sensor Networks: Problems and Passive Inspection.
  Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems (WISES '07). pp. 180-193, Madrid, Spain, June 2007
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Matthias Ringwald, Kay Römer, Andrea Vitaletti
  Passive Inspection of Sensor Networks.
  Proceedings of the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS 2007). pp. 205-222, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, June 2007
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)
  
  
• Matthias Ringwald, Kay Römer, Andrea Vitaletti
  SNIF: Sensor Network Inspection Framework.
  Technical Report No. 535, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, October 2006
  Abstract, BibTeX, Paper (.pdf)