anyMAC: adapting the Sun SPOT architecture for MAC development

The Sun SPOT platform allows sensor network nodes to be programmed in Java and is therefore well suited for prototyping new sensor network protocols. The design of the Sun SPOT network stack however, makes it hard to replace the default IEEE 802.15.4 based MAC implementation. We therefore introduce the ‘anyMAC project’: a number of alterations to the default Sun SPOT network stack. The resulting ‘anyMAC network stack’ allows MAC implementations to be easily interchanged and provides the flexibility needed to allow new MAC implementations to be developed, as demonstrated by a proof of concept ‘DemoMAC’ MAC implementation. Performance tests show that this flexibility is achieved with a very acceptable performance loss. At MAC level, the round trip time of the anyMAC network stack differs by only 12% from that of the Sun SPOT network stack, while the throughput is only marginally affected.