About WebMaDa

Today a growing number of applications within the Internet of Things (IoT) depends on data collected by wireless sensor networks. The individual nodes of these networks have severe resource limitations, concerning storage, processing, and transmission capabilities, but also concerning energy available for communication functions. Supporting the required protocol functionality in combination with the goal of energy-saving operation typically results in the development of proprietary, highly specialized communication protocols for wireless sensor networks (WSN).

However, with Internet technology as the dominating communication paradigm for a wide range of application areas, it became an attractive goal to be able to use Internet protocols (IP) within WSNs. The idea itself is interesting but at the same time challenging, because the commonly used devices in WSNs are very constraint in memory, computational capacity, and power. The most challenging constraints are the first two if more than only data collection and sending should be performed by the devices. RFC 7228 groups the devices into classes depending on their RAM and ROM resources and points out that only devices with more than 10 KB RAM and 100 KB ROM are able to support Internet connectivity and security functions. The latter becomes essential due to the linkage of WSNs to the Internet and the raising concerns of privacy and security by the users, because any kind of collected data includes sensitive information (e.g., ID, address). Thus, WSN solutions must support security solutions beyond efficient data transmission.


The SecureWSN research started in 2008 having the following aims:

  • Development of efficient and secure communication protocols for WSN application for very constrained devices using the IEEE 802.15.4 standards,
  • Support of interoperability of hardware types and operating system level,
  • Separation of hardware/network configuration tasks and mobile data access,
  • Support of data control by network (data) owner,
  • Immediate data access modification, and
  • Automation of request handlings.

Having these aims in mind it was decided to design and realize an architecture consisting of three components:

  • Constrained Network (commonly a WSN) collecting data using TinyIPFIX (RFC 8272) with PULL and PUSH support as data collection protocol secured in different ways (e.g., TinySAM, TinyTO, sTiki, DTLS-based, ECC-based),
  • CoMaDa (Configuration, Management, and Data Handling Framework) functioning as a gateway for the communication between WSN and WebMaDa as well as supporting all configuration tasks for the network and the hardware, and
  • WebMaDa (Web-based Managment and Data Handling Framework) consisting of a back- and front-end responsible for data storage, AAA activities, visualization options, and Web-based access and managment of the network.

Exhausting information about the SecureWSN research and all realized functionalites in the different components can be found here.



Developer of WebMaDa are members and Alumnis of the SeCoSys-Team:

  • Michael Keller
  • Claudio Anliker
  • Dominik Bünzli
  • Marie-Claire Hanschmann
  • Dario Schaumburger
  • Wolfgang Edinger
  • Marcel Mack
  • David Noël Abbe
  • Alexander Neidhardt
  • Alexander Walter
  • Florian Nussbaum



Special thanks goes to the affiliations I was employed: