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

本项目的目标是为第二代传感器网络奠定理论基础。传感器网络的核心有两个不同的特征。传感器网络的一个显著特点是由传感器数据驱动，这些数据不像数据网络中那样从一个节点独立到另一个节点，而是在空间和时间上都是相关的。因此，该项目的目标之一是调查如何在充分利用这种相关性的情况下有效地运营这种网络。传感器网络的第二个显著特征是，人们通常对将一个节点产生的所有感知数据传输到另一个节点不感兴趣。相反，传感器网络的目的是根据数据(例如，警报网络)执行推断或根据数据(例如，平均温度)进行估计。更广泛地说，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，研究的另一个重点是传感器网络的体系结构，它利用所有分布式计算资源和无线通信介质来组织网内计算和通信，同时考虑到它们可能在能量、带宽、内存等方面的限制。用于进行研究的工具包括用于分布式函数计算的网络编码、路由和数据存储、分布式压缩和密码学。项目成果将通过主要会议和期刊的出版物传播，并在项目接近尾声时演示用于目标监测和探测的数据流。

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.