Generic Multi--packet Communication Through Object Serialization

Wireless sensor networks communication protocols and abstractions have remained fairly simple until now, dealing only with payloads the size of individual network packets. A method to transparently communicate variably sized data in a platform-agnostic manner may ease building energyefficient and robust applications. This paper presents a communication abstraction that enables multi-packet communication, while minimizing memory requirements by using an object serialization mechanism to integrate memory management and communication functionalities. Evaluation shows reduction of communication of up to 3.5 times using our method compared to state of the art, and improvement of application performance through the use of reliable communication.