GCP: Gossip-based Code Propagation for Large-scale Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) have recently received an increasing interest. They are now expected to be deployed for long periods of time, thus requiring software updates. Updating the software code automatically on a huge number of sensors is a tremendous task, as ''by hand'' updates can obviously not be considered, especially when all participating sensors are embedded on mobile entities. In this paper, we investigate an approach to automatically update software in mobile sensor-based application when no localization mechanism is available. We leverage the peer-to-peer cooperation paradigm to achieve a good trade-off between reliability and scalability of code propagation. More specifically, we present the design and evaluation of GCP ({\emph Gossip-based Code Propagation}), a distributed software update algorithm for mobile wireless sensor networks. GCP relies on two different mechanisms (piggy-backing and forwarding control) to improve significantly the load balance without sacrificing on the propagation speed. We compare GCP against traditional dissemination approaches. Simulation results based on both synthetic and realistic workloads show that GCP achieves a good convergence speed while balancing the load evenly between sensors

Adaptive epidemic dissemination as a finite-horizon optimal stopping problem

Wireless ad hoc networks are characterized by their limited capabilities and their routine deployment in unfavorable environments. This creates the strong requirement to regulate energy expenditure. We present a scheme to regulate energy cost through optimized transmission scheduling in a noisy epidemic dissemination environment. Building on the intrinsically cross-layer nature of the adaptive epidemic dissemination process, we strive to deliver an optimized mechanism, where energy cost is regulated without compromising the network infection. Improvement of data freshness and applicability in routing are also investigated. Extensive simulations are used to support our proposal

A comparison of epidemic algorithms in wireless sensor networks

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We consider the problem of reliable data dissemination in the context of wireless sensor networks. For some application scenarios, reliable data dissemination to all nodes is necessary for propagating code updates, queries, and other sensitive information in wireless sensor networks. Epidemic algorithms are a natural approach for reliable distribution of information in such ad hoc, decentralized, and dynamic environments. In this paper we show the applicability of epidemic algorithms in the context of wireless sensor environments, and provide a comparative performance analysis of the three variants of epidemic algorithms in terms of message delivery rate, average message latency, and messaging overhead on the network. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved