Distributed collaboration for event detection in wireless sensor networks

With the advancement of technology in micro-electronics and wireless communication, small miniature devices called sensor nodes can be used to perform various tasks by forming themselves in to wireless sensor networks. In Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN), event detection is one of the main requirements for most of the applications. An event can be a simple event or a combination of two or more simple events (Composite Event). Detecting and reporting an event desired by the application (user) inspite of stringent constraints of sensor nodes like low energy, low bandwidth, frequent failures etc., is one of the main challenges in WSN. This can be achieved with less uncertainty and masking failures by considering collaboration among sensor nodes. We propose a framework for distributed event detection using collaboration in WSN. The framework consists of two protocols that build a tree by using a communication model similar to the Publish-Subscribe paradigm. This framework is a part of Component Oriented Middleware for Sensor networks (COMiS). In COMiS framework, components are loaded as and when required based on the application semantics. If collaboration is considered, the goal of the application can be easily accomplished even in case of failures of sensors and low energy of nodes.