Selective Reprogramming in Sensor Networks

This paper introduces a selective reprogramming scheme for wireless sensor networks, which is reliable, robust and scalable. Selective wireless code replacements are mandatory for real-world deployments where no wired connections exist to a majority of the nodes and where different hardware or different roles lead to a heterogeneous network. The presented scheme is based on the idea that nodes to be updated share missing program parts with each other. We show by real-world experiments and simulations that it reduces the duration of the update process and the number of transmitted messages compared to related work. Even in extremely lossy networks, it reprograms 225 nodes in less than 120 seconds.