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Title |
FlowTalk: Language Support for Long-Latency Operations in Embedded Devices |
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Authors |
Alexandre Bergel, William Harrison, Vinny Cahill, Siobhan Clarke |
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Publication date |
July 2011 |
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Abstract |
Wireless sensor networks necessitate a programming model different from those used to develop desktop applications. Typically, resources in terms of power and memory are constrained. C is the most common programming language used to develop applications on very small embedded sensor devices. We claim that C does not provide efficient mechanisms to address the implicit asynchronous nature of sensor sampling. C applications for these devices suffer from a disruption in their control flow. In this paper, we present FlowTalk, a new object-oriented programming language aimed at making software development for wireless embedded sensor devices easier. FlowTalk is an object-oriented programming language in which dynamicity (e.g., object creation) has been traded for a reduction in memory consumption. The event model that traditionally comes from using sensors is adapted in FlowTalk with controlled disruption, a light-weight continuation mechanism. The essence of our model is to turn asynchronous long-latency operations into synchronous and blocking method calls. FlowTalk is built for TinyOS and can be used to develop applications that can fit in 4 KB of memory for a large number of wireless sensor devices. |
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Downloaded |
11 times |
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Pages |
526-543 |
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Volume |
37 |
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Journal name |
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering |
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Publisher |
IEEE Computer Society Press (Los Alamitos, CA, USA) |
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