Tenet: An Architecture for Tiered Embedded Networks

News

Source Code Release: Tenet, Tenet-t2.1, and Threaded-Tenet developers code available. Nov. 2009. SVN repository.

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

Deployment: Tenet was deployed at James Reserve for three months. May~Aug 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

• Jeongyeup Paek (contact author)
• Ben Greenstein
• Omprakash Gnawali
• Ki-Young Jang
• Marcos Vieira

Publications

Related Publications

Talks

Related Projects, Applications and Deployments

• Pursuit-Evasion Game
• Bird Nest Box Monitoring at James Reserves
• Pitfall Trap Array Monitoring at James Reserves
• Ambient Vibration Monitoring on Vincent Thomas Bridge
• Tutornet: A Tiered Sensor Network Testbed
• Re-implementation of Tenet API using TOSThreads and TinyLD

Software

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

Posters

• Tenet: An Architecture For Tiered Embedded Networks, Jan. 2005
• Tenet: An Architecture For Tiered Embedded Networks, Jan. 2006
• Programming and Architecting Embedded Networked Systems, Jan. 2006
• Tenet: An Architecture For Tiered Embedded Networks, Oct. 2007
• An Easily Deployable Wireless Imaging System, Oct. 2008

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 25 2009