A SystemC-centric Approach for Simulation and Generation of WSN Applications Targeted to ZigBee

Development of applications for wireless sensor networks(WSNs) requires a high effort due to the really limitedresources available on sensor nodes, to the presence ofbare operating systems and to the need to be compliant withemerging standards, such as ZigBee/IEEE 802.15.4. In thispaper, a novel approach for the development of WSN applicationsis presented and exemplified to the specific caseof the ZigBee standard. The programming paradigm consideredin this work is the object-oriented one, familiar tomost SW developers. The aim is to simulate the applicationsfor functional validation and to map them onto a particularHW/SW architecture. SystemC and middleware SW are thekey components of the followed approach. SystemC providesthe traditional object-oriented paradigm and the simulationenvironment. Platform peculiarities are first maskedby middleware services and then mapped onto the servicesof an actual middleware, e.g., the ZigBee stack. ZigBee profilesare also supported, thus obtaining an even more optimizedcode. The approach has been applied to an actualapplication on the Texas Instruments’ ZigBee DevelopmentKit.