Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) penetrated the
market mainly as solutions for specific application scenarios.
However, this strong specialization limits WSNs reuse both
in terms of development as well as in terms of technical
results: Every new application scenario requires a new design,
development and validation, as well as management skills.
This is frustrating for any WSNs user, developer or manager.
To reverse this tendency and thus improve the quality
of experience and user-friendliness in WSNs, we designed
FLEXOR, a sustainable software architecture optimized to
support the implementation, rapid prototyping, evaluation,
and testing of wireless sensor network applications, that is
platform independent and user-friendly. FLEXOR is designed
to accommodate many different applications and services for
wireless sensor networks and foster code re-usability and
cross-platform component re-usability. FLEXOR offers high
modularity, well defined interfaces, remote node management
functionality as well as run-time module exchange. Finally, the
introduction of a unifying way for WSNs development opens to
a higher homogeneity and thus to more easy comparison among
different solutions. We present here an analysis of FLEXOR
from these new angles and show how effective it is for several
purposes and in particular for non-experts and in education.
Keywords-QoE, User-friendliness, Wireless Sensor Networks,
Architecture, Sustainable reuse, Mobility