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Issues and Debugging Methodology for Porting TinyOS on a Small Network Embedded System  

Kim, Dae-Nam (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, University of Incheon)
Kim, Kyo-Sun (Dept. of Electronics Engineering, University of Incheon)
Publication Information
Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea CI / v.45, no.6, 2008 , pp. 94-105 More about this Journal
Abstract
Numerous platforms have been developed for ZigBee-based network embedded systems. Also, operating systems like TinyOS have been installed to facilitate efficient implementation of wireless sensor network applications which collect data, and/or execute commands. First of all, porting an operating system on a new platform may need invention of a substitute for a required but unsupported hardware component. This paper presents a multiplexed virtual system timer for a platform without a counter comparator which we have contrived to emulate by using an extra counter. Such porting also injects unexpected faults which cause a variety of painful failures. Unfortunately, TinyOS requires to handle a lot of asynchronous hardware interrupts which are hard to trace during debugging. Besides, simulators are not available for a new platform since the models of hardware on the platform are not usually developed, yet. We propose novel instrumentation techniques which can be used to effectively trace the bugs in such lack of debugging environment. These techniques are used to identify and fix a great deal of nasty issues in porting TinyOS 2.0 on MG2400 and MG2455 platforms made by RadioPulse Inc.
Keywords
Network Embedded System; TinyOS Porting; TinyOS Issue; Debugging; System Timer;
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