A real-time architecture for automated wireless sensor and actuator networks

Wireless sensor and actuator network (WSAN) are composed of a large number of heterogeneous sensors and actuators. In the automated WSAN, sensors are collaborated to monitor the physical phenomenon in the surveillance field, while the actuators are to collect sensing data, process the data and perform appropriate actions without the existence of central controller. Most WSANs are used in the real-time sensing and reaction systems towards physical environment. In this paper, we propose a real-time architecture for automated WSAN to bind the latency in applications. In the architecture, we present distributed mechanisms for sensor-actuator event reporting and self-aware coordination to maintain the delay bound sensor-actuator communication. And then we present mechanism for ordered multi-event task assignment, and the acting coordination mechanism to provide efficient reaction and execution of the event task in time. Preliminary simulation results are presented to demonstrate the advantages of our solutions.