SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR ENABLING EXTENSIBILITY IN SENSING SYSTEMS

One embodiment of the present invention provides a method and apparatus for enabling extensibility in sensing systems. The distributed sensing system comprises a number of sensor nodes, a device database, a sensing module registry, a sensing needs monitor, and an automatic composer. The device database is in communication with at least one sensor node and configured to maintain physical information on at least one sensor node. The sensing module registry is configured to maintain a registry of a number of software modules that are available for extracting information from sensor data. The sensing needs monitor is configured to maintain a list of context pairs that represent a number of sensing needs of a sensing application. The automatic composer is configured to generate a composition of software modules, at runtime, to realize the sensing needs of users and applications.