CAREER: Cross-layer Design for Sensor Management in Wireless Sensor Networks

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It is estimated that by the year 2010 more than 10 billion wireless sensors will be deployed for use in applications as diverse as environmental monitoring, surveillance, and medical monitoring. For these sensor networks to last for years unattended, it is vital to make them energy-efficient while ensuring they provide the data necessary to meet application needs. While much research has focused on the design of individual protocols to meet these goals, much less attention has been paid to the optimization of network operation at the system level. One such approach is a cross-layer system design that integrates many of the protocol functions into a high level sensor management protocol that assigns roles to each sensor; these roles include sensing the environment, routing other sensors' data, fusing the data locally, and controlling neighboring nodes. This project develops models that allow for global optimization of sensor management, and it develops distributed techniques that jointly optimize the use of sensor and network resources in all possible roles. The optimization models highlight the potential limitations of existing techniques, the distributed architecture provides a feasible solution for long lifetime sensor networks, and a sensor network testbed implementation shows the efficacy of this cross-layer architecture for real systems. The potential of this research for high societal impact combined with the innovative techniques being employed provide ample opportunities for attracting students, from junior high school up through graduate school, to the field and for training the next generation of engineers in this exciting area.