Bandwidth-minimized distribution of measurements in global sensor networks

Abstract

Global sensor networks (GSN) allow applications to integrate huge amounts of data using real-time streams from virtually anywhere. Queries to a GSN offer many degrees of freedom, e.g. the resolution and the geographic origin of data, and scaling optimization of data streams to many applications is highly challenging. Existing solutions hence either limit the flexibility with additional constraints or ignore the characteristics of sensor streams where data points are produced synchronously. In this paper, we present a new approach to bandwidth-minimized distribution of real-time sensor streams in a GSN. Using a distributed index structure, we partition queries for bandwidth management and quickly identify overlapping queries. Based on this information, our relay strategy determines an optimized distribution structure which minimizes traffic while being adaptive to changing conditions. Simulations show that total traffic and user perceived delay can be reduced by more than 50%. © 2014 IFIP Internatinal Federation for Information Processing.