A framework for assessing the quality of event detection in sensor networks

Despite the multitude of protocols that have been designed for event monitoring in sensor networks, very little work has been devoted to assessing the quality of these protocols in terms of their ability to provide timely and accurate information about events. The problem is challenging because of the combined effects of the stochastic nature of event arrival and duration and the stochastic nature of a sensor's sleep-awake schedule. These various stochastic processes need to be modelled jointly in order to be able to reason, with any degree of confidence, about the quality of the event detection. The main contribution of this paper is a framework for assessing our confidence about the occurrence of events in sensor networks. Our framework models the interaction between the stochastic nature of an event arrival, the event duration, and the sensor sleep/awake schedule. By employing our framework, it is possible to configure individual sensor duty cycles to meet the requirements of mission-oriented applications in terms of timely and accurate information about events of interest.