| Wireless sensors are very small computers, and understanding the timing and behavior of software written for them is crucial to ensure that they perform correctly. Testing sensor network applications, however, is extremely hard due to the lack of controllability, and complex simulation setups are often too expensive to undertake. This dissertation presents new dynamic and static analysis methods to improve the development of efficient and correct nesC/TinyOS programs. Two main research issues are addressed. The first issue is that understanding the dynamic behavior of a wireless sensors application is hard, which means more time and effort are needed in the development/deployment process. The second issue is that verifying real-time specifications for nesC/TinyOS applications is a difficult task. The work in this dissertation effectively employs dynamic and static analysis techniques to solve these issues. The thesis is validated with experimental results showing that the created approaches are efficient, lightweight, and can be effectively used to improve sensor software understanding. |
