Abstract
Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSN) have proved to be a potential technology for developing applications that can monitor and control physical and biochemical parameters on the human body. Developing such applications is rather cumbersome, since these have to meet a combination of conflicting requirements. Achieving accuracy, efficiency, correctness, fault-tolerance, adaptability and reliability on WBSN is tricky because these features have to be provided beyond the design/implementation phase, notably at execution time. In this paper we explore the viability and convenience of autonomic computing in the context of WBSNs. In particular, we propose to extend a conventional WBSN framework with an autonomic plane, a way for separating out the provision of self-* properties from the WBSN application logic. This separation of concerns leads to an ease of deployment and run-time management of new applications. We study this approach in the context of SPINE2 framework, showing how this can be readily enhanced with an autonomic layer. We find that this enhancement brings not only considerable functional improvements but also measurable performance benefits. © 2012 IEEE.