Implementing a Sensor Database System using a Generic Data Dissemination Mechanism

The vision of a sensor network as a database has been reasonably well explored in the recent literature. Several sensor database systems have been prototyped [1, 11], and some have even been deployed [2]. However, these systems have largely integrated the query processing and the routing mechanisms. In this paper, we explore the design and implementation of a sensor database system (specifically, TinyDB [11]) on top of a generic sensor network data dissemination mechanism (Directed Diffusion [8]). Such a decoupled design is desirable, since it allows us to significantly re-use functionality and promotes overall system robustness. In conducting this exercise, we found that TinyDB influenced the re-design of Diffusion in several important ways.