Viptos: A Graphical Development and Simulation Environment for TinyOS-based Wireless Sensor Networks

The purpose of this project is to further develop Viptos (Visual Ptolemy and TinyOS), an integrated graphical development and simulation environment for TinyOS-based wireless sensor networks [1].

TinyOS is a component-based, event-driven runtime environment designed for wireless sensor networks. Viptos allows networked embedded systems developers to construct block and arrow diagrams to create TinyOS programs from any standard library of TinyOS components written in nesC, a C-based programming language. Viptos automatically transforms the diagram into a nesC program that can be compiled and downloaded from within the graphical environment onto any TinyOS-supported target platform.

Viptos is built on Ptolemy II, a modeling and simulation environment for embedded systems, and TOSSIM, an interrupt-level discrete event simulator for homogeneous TinyOS networks. In particular, Viptos includes the full capabilities of VisualSense [2], a Ptolemy II environment that can model communication channels, networks, and non-TinyOS nodes. Viptos extends the capabilities of TOSSIM to allow simulation of heterogeneous networks.

Viptos provides a bridge between VisualSense and TOSSIM by providing interrupt-level simulation of actual TinyOS programs, with packet-level simulation of the network, while allowing the developer to use other models of computation available in Ptolemy II for modeling the physical environment and other parts of the system. This framework allows application developers to easily transition between high-level simulation of algorithms to low-level implementation and simulation.

For more information about Viptos, see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/viptos.

[1]

E. Cheong, Edward A. Lee, Yang Zhao, "Viptos: A Graphical Development and Simulation Environment for TinyOS-based Wireless Sensor Networks", Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2006-15, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, February 15, 2006.

[2]

P. Baldwin, et al. "Modeling of Sensor Nets in Ptolemy II", in Proc. of Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN'04), April 26-27, 2004, Berkeley, CA, USA.

Last updated 09/29/06