Shared queries in sensor networks for multi-user support

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks are still quite limiting in the way they can be programmed and used. For instance, most existing platforms for sensors networks allow only a single application or user to run on them. This makes it difficult to, e.g., have mobile users connecting to a local sensor network as they arrive at a new location. In this paper we tackle the problem of supporting different applications over the same sensor network. The idea is to allow applications to request different data at different rates from different sensors of the same sensor network while still being able to run the sensor network in an efficient manner. Our approach is to merge an arbitrary number of user queries into a single network query. By doing this, traffic is minimised and the sensors have better energy consumption behavior than if all user queries would have been directly sent to the network. In the paper we describe the algorithms for the transformation of queries and the resulting data streams. We also provide an extensive performance evaluation of the algorithms using sets of over hundred user queries.