Wearable Computing

4Task‐Oriented Programming in BSNs

4.1 Introduction

The SPINE framework described in Chapter 3 provides an effective solution for easily and rapidly developing highly customizable signal‐processing applications for BSNs. The in‐node processing applications supported by SPINE are usually defined as a three‐layer chain of tasks: (i) acquisition of raw data streams from the sensors, (ii) computation of processing functions on the data streams to extract specific features, and (iii) transmission of processed data to the base station for further computation.

However, some signal‐processing applications require an extension of this approach to fully satisfy the needs for a more complex composition of sensing and processing tasks. Therefore, a task‐centric programming model has been experimented in a new reengineering of the SPINE framework, dubbed SPINE2 [1]. Conceived not to be a replacement for SPINE 1.x versions, SPINE2 is actually intended as an alternative application design tool exposing a different methodology to translate the high‐level intentions of the developers into actual executable routines to be deployed on a BSN. The task‐oriented approach aims at providing an easy and effective way for developing distributed signal‐processing applications, thanks to its intuitive and graphical design model. It offers a wide range of benefits to developers, like the advantage of abstracting away low‐level details of the sensor platforms and their operating system as well as the complexity ...