Integrated Development Environment for Debugging Policy-based Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks

Autonomic and customized behavior in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) can be facilitated through the support of policy-based programming. Currently, a facility for policy debugging and execution trace does not exist. The state of the art assumes that developers will use other methods such as static analysis, batch scripts, and the emulators/simulators to achieve debugging and testing through unsustainably complex gauntlets of manual tests. In this paper, a new approach for controlling the policy-based WSN application simulation is proposed by creating a Policy Integrated Development Environment (Policy IDE) to work interactively with the TOSSIM simulation software using a packet communication mechanism. The benefits of this approach are truly interactive simulation, granular unit testing, interactive debugging, execution trace to validate application logic, and a simplified debugging process for applications that involve policy programming.