Nec Laboratories America, Inc.

Florin Sultan

Srimat T Chakradhar

Kiran Nagaraja

Vijay Raghunathan

Nupur Kothari

Ram Kumar Rengaswamy

A computer implemented technique framework, prototype tool and associated methods that provide a high degree of visibility and control over the in-field execution of software in a minimally intrusive manner wherein developer-defined correctness tests and validation logic are embedded into the sensor node itself, making in-field software testing autonomous without necessitating continuous developer participation.

Visibility and control of wireless sensor networks

A method and system usable in sensor networks for handling memory faults is disclosed. In order to protect the operating system of a sensor node, coarse-grained memory protection is provided by creating and enforcing an application fault domain in the data memory address space of the sensor node. The data memory accessed by the application modules is restricted to the region (which defines the application fault domain) within the data memory address space. The application modules are prevented from accessing memory outside the application fault domain through software-based run-time checks. The state belonging to the operations system is maintained outside of the application fault domain, and is thus protected from memory corruption from any application module. In order to ensure that an application module does not operate on a corrupted state, fine-grained error detection and recovery is provided within the application fault domain. Any corruption of memory within the application fault domain is detected by a run-time memory integrity verifier implemented in the operating system kernel. Recovery involves purging the corrupted state and restarting only the affected application module to operate on an uncorrupted state.

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Princeton, NJ, United States of America

Florin Sultan