Information Potential Fields Navigation in Wireless Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks

As wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are increasingly being deployed in some important applications, it becomes imperative that we consider application requirements in in-network processes. We intend to use a WSN to aid information querying and navigation within a dynamic and real-time environment. We propose a novel method that relies on the heat diffusion equation to finish the navigation process conveniently and easily. From the perspective of theoretical analysis, our proposed work holds the lower constraint condition. We use multiple scales to reach the goal of accurate navigation. We present a multi-scale gradient descent method to satisfy users’ requirements in WSNs. Formula derivations and simulations show that the method is accurately and efficiently able to solve typical sensor network configuration information navigation problems. Simultaneously, the structure of heat diffusion equation allows more flexibility and adaptability in searching algorithm designs

Quality of Information in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey 1 (Completed paper)

Abstract: In Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) the operating conditions and/or user requirements are often desired to be evolvable, whether driven by changes of the monitored parameters or WSN properties of configuration, structure, communication capacities, node density, and energy among many others. While considering evolvability, delivering the required information with the specified quality (accuracy, timeliness, reliability etc) defined by the user constitutes a key objective of WSNs. Most existing research efforts handle fluctuations of operation conditions in order to deliver information with the highest possible specified quality. In this paper, we take these aspects into consideration and survey existing work on Quality of Information (QoI). As a contribution, we categorize WSN information into a set of abstract classes for generality across varied application types. Our survey shows that currently QoI is usually addressed in isolation by focusing on discrete data processing operations/building blocks such as raw data collection, in-network processing (compression, aggregation), information transport and sink operations for decision making. This survey comprehensively explains the different views of QoI on attributes, metrics and WSN functional operations mapped with existing approaches. The survey also forms the basis for specifying needed QoI research issues