MANNA: A Management Architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are bewming an increasingly important technology that will be used in a variety of applications such as environmental monitoring, infrastructure management, public safety, medical, home and office security, transportation, and militaq. WSNs will also play a key role in pervasive computing where computing devices and people are connected to the Internet. Until now, WSNs and their applications have been developed without considering a management solution. This is a critical problem sincc nctworks comprising tens of thousands of nodes are expected to be used in some of the applications above. This article proposes the MANNA managemcnt architccture for WSNs. In particular, it prescnts the functional, information, and.physical management architectures that take into account specific characteristics of this type of network. Some of them are restrict physical resources such as energy and computing power, frequent reconfiguration and adaptation, and faults caused by nodes unavailable. The MANNA architecture considers three management dimensions: functional areas, management.levels, and WSN functionalities. These dimensions are specified to the management of a WSN and are the basis for a list of management functions, The article also proposes WSN models to guide the management activities and the use of correlation in the WSN management. This is a first step into a largely uncxplored research area.