Tenet: An Architecture for Tiered Embedded Networks

News

Software Release: Tenet 2.0 was released on June 25, 2008. Download page.

Deployment: Tenet was deployed at James Reserve for over a month. May 2008.

Software Release: Tenet 1.0 was released on January 23, 2007. Download page.

Project Overview

The hardest problem facing sensor networking today is the design and implementation of complex routing structures and application semantics for collaborative in-network processing on motes. Researchers have not been able to develop general-purpose routing techniques that support collaborative processing, and have turned to routing structures that embody application semantics. This slows the proliferation of sensor networks, since it destroys modularity, reusability, and manageability at the lower layers.

The Tenet project is developing an alternative architecture for tiered wireless sensor networks which contain both small-form-factor motes and Stargate-class "masters". The Tenet project's guiding architectural principle asserts that multi-node data fusion functionality and complex application logic should be implemented only on the masters, since the cost and complexity of implementing this in motes outweighs the performance benefits of doing so.

Tenet thus simplifies and standardizes the design and construction of the most difficult-to-handle software on a sensor network, namely that on motes. It restricts mote communication to trees rooted at masters. Tree communication is well-understood, leads to more predictable communication patterns and improves the manageability of the mote tier. Direct inter-mote communication would destroy much of this predictability and manageability.

The project is designing and prototyping the Tenet stack. This stack embodies the Tenet architectural principle and can be reused by several applications. The development of such a stack for large-scale sensor networks will greatly accelerate the development of a variety of applications ranging from habitat monitoring to structural monitoring. Without a Tenet-like architecture, sensor network deployments will never truly impact the world.

Faculty

• Ramesh Govindan
• Eddie Kohler
• Deborah Estrin

Students

• Fang Bian
• Omprakash Gnawali
• Ben Greenstein
• Ki-Young Jang
• Jeongyeup Paek
• Sumit Rangwala
• Thanos Stathopoulos
• Marcos Vieira

Publications

Omprakash Gnawali, Ben Greenstein, Ki-Young Jang, August Joki, Jeongyeup Paek, Marcos Vieira, Deborah Estrin, Ramesh Govindan, Eddie Kohler, The TENET Architecture for Tiered Sensor Networks, In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (Sensys), Boulder, Colorado, November 2006. [PDF] [Abstract]

Ramesh Govindan, Eddie Kohler, Deborah Estrin, Fang Bian, Krishna Chintalapudi, Om Gnawali, Sumit Rangwala, Ramakrishna Gummadi, Thanos Stathopoulos, Tenet: An Architecture for Tiered Embedded Networks, In CENS Technical Report 56, November 10 2005. [PDF] [Abstract]

Talks

Jeongyeup Paek, The TENET Architecture for Tiered Sensor Networks, Boulder, Colorado, November 2006. [PPT]

Ramesh Govindan, Towards General Purpose Sensing Systems, Cork, Ireland, June 2007. [PDF]

Ramesh Govindan, Tenet: An Architecture for Tiered Embedded Networks, Harvard University, October 2005. [PDF]

Related Projects, Applications and Deployments

• Pursuit-Evasion Game
• Ambient Vibration Monitoring on Vincent Thomas Bridge
• Pitfall Trap Array Monitoring using Cyclops Camera at James Reserves
• Tutornet: A Tiered Sensor Network Testbed

Software

Please visit the software page to download Tenet and get started.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0520235. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recomendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Last Modified: Sep 6 2007