Collaborative Research: NeTS-NOSS: Towards a Theory of In-network Computation for Surveillance and Monitoring in Wireless Sensor Networks

该项目的目标是为第二代传感器网络奠定理论基础。传感器网络有两个显著的特点。 一个区别特征是传感器网络由传感器数据驱动，传感器数据不是如在数据网络中那样从节点到节点独立的，而是在空间上以及在时间上相关的。 因此，该项目的目标之一是研究如何充分利用这种相关性有效地操作这种网络。 传感器网络的第二个显著特征是，人们通常不对将在一个节点处生成的所有传感数据传输到另一个节点感兴趣。相反，传感器网络的目的是从数据执行推断（例如，报警网络）或根据数据进行估计（例如，平均温度）。 更一般地说，传感器网络的目的是计算数据的适当函数，包括时间和空间，并基于数据做出决策。 因此，研究的另一个焦点是传感器网络的体系结构，以组织网络内的计算和通信，利用所有分布式计算资源以及无线通信介质，同时尊重它们在能量，带宽，存储器等方面的可能限制。用于进行研究的工具包括用于分布式函数计算，路由和数据存储的网络编码，分布式压缩和加密。该项目的成果将通过在主要会议和期刊上发表的出版物以及通过在项目结束时展示用于目标监测和探测的数据流来传播。

The goal of this project is to develop a theoretical foundation for second generation sensor networks. There are two distinguishing features that are central to sensor networks. One distinguishing feature is that sensor networks are driven by sensor data, data which are not independent from node to node as in a data network, but which are correlated spatially as well as temporally. Thus one of the goals of the project is to investigate how to operate such networks efficiently taking full advantage of such correlations. A second distinguishing feature of sensor networks is that one is not generally interested in transporting all the sensory data generated at a node to another node. Rather, the purpose of a sensor network is to perform inference from the data (e.g., alarm networks) or make estimates from the data (e.g., mean temperature). More generally, the purpose of a sensor network is to compute an appropriate function of the data, both temporal as well as spatial, and make decisions based on the data. Thus the another focus of the research is an architecture for sensor networks to organize the in-network computation and communication taking advantage of all the distributed computational resources as well as the wireless communication medium, while respecting their possible limitations on energy, bandwidth, memory, etc. The tools used for conducting the research include network coding for distributed function computation, routing and data storage, distributed compression and cryptography. The results of the project will be disseminated through publications in major conferences and journals, and through a demonstration of data streaming for target monitoring and detection towards the end of the project.