A Software Design Approach for Heterogeneous Systems of Unattended Sensors, Unmanned Vehicles and Monitoring Stations

摘要

The design and implementation of software for network systems of diverse physical assets is a continuing challenge to sensor network developers. The problems are often multiplied when adding new elements, and when reconfiguring existing systems. For software systems, like physical systems, explicit architectural descriptions increase system level comprehension. Coupled with well defined object oriented design practices, system extensibility is defined and software reuse and code composition are enabled. Our research is based on model driven design architecture. High level system models are defined in the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the language of the software engineer. However, since most experimental work is done by non-software specialists, (electronics Engineers, Mechanical Engineers and technicians) the model is translated into a graphical, domain specific model. Components are presented as domain specific icons, and constraints from the UML model are propagated into the domain model. Domain specialists manipulate the domain model, which then composes software elements needed at each node to create an aggregate system.