Paper Info
Title
Darjeeling, a feature-rich VM for the resource poor
Abstract
The programming and retasking of sensor nodes could benefit greatly from the use of a virtual machine (VM) since byte code is compact, can be loaded on demand, and interpreted on a heterogeneous set of devices. The challenge is to ensure good programming tools and a small footprint for the virtual machine to meet the memory constraints of typical WSN platforms. To this end we propose Darjeeling, a virtual machine modelled after the Java VM and capable of executing a substantial subset of the Java language, but designed specifically to run on 8- and 16-bit microcontrollers with 2--10 KB of RAM. The Darjeeling VM uses a 16- rather than a 32-bit architecture, which is more efficient on the targeted platforms. Darjeeling features a novel memory organisation with strict separation of reference from non-reference types which eliminates the need for run-time type inspection in the underlying compacting garbage collector. Darjeeling uses a linked stack model that provides light-weight threads, and supports synchronisation. The VM has been implemented on three different platforms and was evaluated with micro benchmarks and a real-world application. The latter includes a pure Java implementation of the collection tree routing protocol conveniently programmed as a set of cooperating threads, and a reimplementation of an existing environmental monitoring application. The results show that Darjeeling is a viable solution for deploying large-scale heterogeneous sensor networks.
Year
DOI
Venue
2009
10.1145/1644038.1644056
SenSys
Keywords
Field
DocType
large-scale heterogeneous sensor network,darjeeling vm,java language,feature-rich vm,virtual machine,heterogeneous set,resource poor,good programming tool,java vm,pure java implementation,existing environmental monitoring application,memory constraint,wireless sensor network,wireless sensor networks,routing protocol,virtual machines,garbage collector,java,environmental monitoring
Virtual machine,Computer science,Java concurrency,Real time Java,Thread (computing),Real-time computing,Garbage collection,strictfp,Java,Wireless sensor network,Operating system,Embedded system
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
59
2.67
10
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Niels Brouwers11457.89
Koen Langendoen23372285.21
Peter I. Corke32495234.29