Clairvoyant: a comprehensive source-level debugger for wireless sensor networks

ABSTRACT

Wireless sensor network (WSN) applications are notoriously difficult to develop and debug. This paper describes Clairvoyant which is a comprehensive source-level debugger for wireless, embedded networks. With Clairvoyant, a developer can wirelessly connect to a sensor network and execute standard debugging commands including break, step, watch, and backtrace, as well as new commands that are specially designed for debugging WSNs. Clairvoyant attempts to minimize its effect on the program being debugged in terms of network load, memory footprint, execution speed, clock consistency, and flash lifetime.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Debugging aids

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Distributed debugging

General Terms:
Design, Experimentation, Performance

Keywords:
distributed debugging, embedded debugging, source-level debugging, wireless sensor networks