Editing Wireless sensor network (section)

====Operating systems====
[[Operating system]]s for wireless sensor network nodes are typically less complex than general-purpose operating systems. They more strongly resemble [[embedded system]]s, for two reasons. First, wireless sensor networks are typically deployed with a particular application in mind, rather than as a general platform. Second, a need for low costs and low power leads most wireless sensor nodes to have low-power microcontrollers ensuring that mechanisms such as virtual memory are either unnecessary or too expensive to implement.

It is therefore possible to use embedded operating systems such as [[eCos]] or [[uC/OS]] for sensor networks. However, such operating systems are often designed with real-time properties.

[[TinyOS]], developed by [[David Culler]], is perhaps the first operating system specifically designed for wireless sensor networks. TinyOS is based on an [[event-driven programming]] model instead of [[Thread (computer science)|multithreading]]. TinyOS programs are composed of ''event handlers'' and ''tasks'' with run-to-completion semantics. When an external event occurs, such as an incoming data packet or a sensor reading, TinyOS signals the appropriate event handler to handle the event. Event handlers can post tasks that are scheduled by the TinyOS kernel some time later.

[[LiteOS]] is a newly developed OS for wireless sensor networks, which provides UNIX-like abstraction and support for the C programming language.

[[Contiki]], developed by [[Adam Dunkels]], is an OS which uses a simpler programming style in C while providing advances such as [[6LoWPAN]] and [[Protothreads]].

[[RIOT (operating system)]] is a more recent real-time OS including similar functionality to Contiki.

PreonVM<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.virtenio.com/en/preonvm-virtual-maschine.html|title=PreonVM – Virtual maschine for wireless sensor devices|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171111094628/https://www.virtenio.com/en/preonvm-virtual-maschine.html|archive-date=2017-11-11 }}</ref> is an OS for wireless sensor networks, which provides [[6LoWPAN]] based on [[Contiki]] and support for the [[Java (programming language)|Java]] programming language.