Managing evolving shapes in sensor networks

Abstract

This work addresses the problem of efficient distributed detection and tracking of mobile and evolving/deformable spatial shapes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). The shapes correspond to contiguous regions bounding the locations of sensors in which the readings of the sensors satisfy a particular threshold-based criterion related to the values of a physical phenomenon that they measure. We formalize the predicates representing the shapes in such settings and present detection algorithms. In addition, we provide a light-weight protocol and aggregation methods for energy-efficient distributed execution of those algorithms. Another contribution of this work is that we developed efficient techniques for detecting a co-occurrence of shapes within a given proximity from each other. Our experiments demonstrate that, when compared to the centralized techniques -- which is, predicates being detected in a dedicated sink -- as well as distributed periodic contours construction, our methodologies yield significant energy/communication savings.