Y-Threads: Supporting Concurrency in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract. Resource constrained systems often are programmed using an eventbased model. Many applications do not lend themselves well to an event-based approach, but preemptive multithreading pre-allocates resources that cannot be used even while not in use by the owning thread. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach called Y-Threads. Y-Threads provide separate small stacks for blocking portions of applications, while allowing for shared stacks for nonblocking computations. We have implemented Y-Threads on Mica and Telos wireless sensor network platforms. The results show that Y-Threads provide a preemptive multithreaded programming model with resource utilization closer to an event-based approach. In addition, relatively large memory buffers can be allocated for temporary use with less overhead than conventional dynamic memory allocation methods.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: DCOSS
• Authors: Christopher Nitta, Raju Pandey, Yann Ramin
• Keywords: Approach Called Y-threads, DCOSS 2006, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Event-based Approach, Preemptive Multithreading Pre-allocates