A semantics-based middleware for utilizing heterogeneous sensor networks

With the proliferation of various kinds of sensor networks, we will see large amounts of heterogeneous data. They have different characteristics such as data content, formats, modality and quality. Existing research has largely focused on issues related to individual sensor networks; how to make use of diverse data beyond the individual network level is largely unaddressed. In this paper, we propose a semantics-based approach for this problem and describe a system that constructs applications that utilize many sources of data simultaneously. We propose models to formally describe the semantics of data sources, and processing modules that perform various kinds of operations on data. Based on such formal semantics, our system composes data sources and processing modules together in response to users' queries. The semantics provides a common ground such that data sources and processing modules from various parties can be shared and reused among applications. We describe our system architecture, illustrate application deployment, and share our experiences in the semantic approach.