This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This project will develop a novel tool, named Sunshine, to effectively support joint evaluation and design of sensor network (sensornet) hardware and software.
Intellectual Merit: A critical roadblock to the success of sensornets is the prohibitively slow and energy-wise impractical software implementations of many important applications. On the other hand, specialized hardware implementation can outperform, energy-wise as well as performance-wise, equivalent software implementations by orders of magnitude. Hence, the joint software-and-hardware design of sensornet applications is a very appealing, yet unexplored, approach. The objective of this project is to develop an effective tool, named Sunshine, to support such codesign. This project may fundamentally transform the relationship between the hardware and software communities of sensornet research. These communities can use Sunshine to efficiently exchange mutual requirements and spread the latest technology advances in each other's fields. Such evolutionary change will greatly improve the state-of-the-art in sensornet technology. Novel hardware architecture and platforms that are unexplored in current designs can be created and tested through Sunshine's cross-domain design environment.
Broader Impact: Serving as a valuable education tool, Sunshine will also foster the continued integration of research and education at the PIs' institution and benefit curriculum at other institutions. Sunshine can serve as the foundation for lab experiments and course projects in networking and embedded system engineering. Sunshine also offers the opportunity for innovative cross-domain education.
