Information Extraction from Large-scale WSNs - A Complex Querying Perspective
Tessa Daniel · Coventry University Open Collections (Coventry university) · 2008
Regardless of the application domain and deployment scope, the ability to retrieve information is critical to the successful functioning of any wireless sensor network (WSN) system. In general, information extraction procedures can be categorized into three main approaches: agent-based, query-based and macroprogramming.Of the three, query-based systems are the most popular mainly because they provide a usable, high level interface to the sensor network while abstracting away some of the low level details like the network topology and radio communication. In contrast, macroprogramming provides a more general-purpose approach to distributed computation compared to traditional query-based approaches and focus on programming the network as a whole rather than programming the individual devices that form the network. The agent-based approach tailors the information extraction mechanism to the type of information needed and the configuration of the network it needs to be extracted from. This report surveys extensively the literature in the area of WSN information extraction, highlights the benefits of in-network processing and proposes a novel hybrid approach that incorporates query and macroprogramming techniques for information extraction in large-scale, informational systems. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through simulation. This is an interim report of work covered in the first year of the PhD program entitled as above.