Nviz - A General Purpse Visualization tool for Wireless Sensor Networks

📝 Abstract

In a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), data manipulation and representation is a crucial part and can take a lot of time to be developed from scratch. Although various visualization tools have been created for certain projects so far, these tools can only be used in certain scenarios, due to their hard-coded packet formats and network’s properties. To speed up the development process, a visualization tool which can adapt to any kind of WSN is essentially necessary. For this purpose, a general-purpose visualization tool - NViz, which can represent and visualize data for any kind of WSN, is proposed. NViz allows users to set their network’s properties and packet formats through XML files. Based on properties defined, users can choose the meaning of them and let NViz represents the data respectively. Furthermore, a better Replay mechanism, which lets researchers and developers debug their WSN easily, is also integrated in this tool. NViz is designed based on a layered architecture which allows for clear and well-defined interrelationships and interfaces between each component.

💡 Analysis

In a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), data manipulation and representation is a crucial part and can take a lot of time to be developed from scratch. Although various visualization tools have been created for certain projects so far, these tools can only be used in certain scenarios, due to their hard-coded packet formats and network’s properties. To speed up the development process, a visualization tool which can adapt to any kind of WSN is essentially necessary. For this purpose, a general-purpose visualization tool - NViz, which can represent and visualize data for any kind of WSN, is proposed. NViz allows users to set their network’s properties and packet formats through XML files. Based on properties defined, users can choose the meaning of them and let NViz represents the data respectively. Furthermore, a better Replay mechanism, which lets researchers and developers debug their WSN easily, is also integrated in this tool. NViz is designed based on a layered architecture which allows for clear and well-defined interrelationships and interfaces between each component.

📄 Content

NViz– A General Purpose Visualization tool for Wireless Sensor Networks Anh-Vu Dinh-Duc HCMC University of Technology Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam anhvu@cse.hcmut.edu.vn The-Hien Dang-Ha HCMC University of Technology Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam thehien.dangha@gmail.com Ngoc-An Lam HCMC University of Technology Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam ngocan1989@gmail.com

Abstract—In a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), data manipulation and representation is a crucial part and can take a lot of time to be developed from scratch. Although various visualization tools have been created for certain projects so far, these tools can only be used in certain scenarios, due to their hard-coded packet formats and network’s properties. To speed up development process, a visualization tool which can adapt to any kind of WSN is essentially necessary. For this purpose, a general-purpose visualization tool – NViz, which can represent and visualize data for any kind of WSN, is proposed. NViz allows user to set their network’s properties and packet formats through XML files. Based on properties defined, user can choose the meaning of them and let NViz represents the data respectively. Furthermore, a better Replay mechanism, which lets researchers and developers debug their WSN easily, is also integrated in this tool. NViz is designed based on a layered architecture which allows for clear and well-defined interrelationships and interfaces between each components. Keywords–Visualization; Wireless Sensor Networks; I. INTRODUCTION Recently, there has been increasing interest in WSNs that are constructed by sensor nodes. Many WSN applications in the fields of environmental monitoring, security, industrial control, and object tracking have been introduced and deployed in practice. Despite the rapid development of sensor networks, there are still many challenges developers face in deployment of WSN applications:

1. Information visualizations: Visualization tools are used to gather information about network properties such as: node status (e.g., battery level or communication power), network topology, wireless bandwidth, or link state… and present them in graphs or other forms on screen. However, WSNs are always application-specific which require different network properties to be monitored. Besides, different packet formats are also needed to be designed for different application scenarios. Therefore, most existing visualization tools today are developed under specialized applications which are almost useless when applications changed.
2. Unit conversion: Raw sensor data collected from sensor nodes are typically provided as direct digital readings from an ADC (Analog to Digital Converter). Voltage of the sensor is sampled and converted to a number relative to some reference voltages. To make the data useful, visualization tools should provide the ability of converting raw sensor data to engineering units based on conversionfunction defined by user. Most existing visualization tools are lack of that ability.
3. Replay: The rapidly changing state of sensor network due to fast incoming packets makes it hard for users to debug their WSNs. Researchers and developers always want to observe the detail variations inside their network to verify their algorithms or to validate their designs. However, most existing visualization tools only provide a basic replay function which helps users record their incoming packet in log files and playback them later. Users can not determine when to start playing back or run forward/backward through the log files. A new “record and play back” mechanism to enable user to monitor their WSNs like videos is therefore needed. In this paper, we present NViz, a general purpose visualization tool which is designed to take these challenges into account. Users now can set up their network properties and packet formats through 2 XML files. Moreover, conversion function for each network properties can also be defined in XML file.
   II. RELATED WORKS In recent years, there are many visualization tools have been introduced such as: SpyGlass[3], MoteView[4], NetTopo[5], Octopus[6] … However, most of them are developed for specialized applications and cannot verify with the change of application scenarios[1, 2]. Users have to modify and re-compile program or create new plug-in module for these tools if they want to use it in their applications. NetViewer[7], a universal visualization tool for WSN, has been introduced at GLOBECOM 2010. It allows users define packet format in XML file and translates packets according to that. In that way, the development of WSNs and visualization tool could be separated. The Netviewer can be used for visualization no matter what the node programs are or which the protocols the base station node uses to communicate with the host. It also provides replay function for debugging purpose and on-line data di

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