In a sensor network information from multiple nodes must usually be aggregated in order to accomplish a certain task. A natural way to view this information gathering is in terms of interactions between nodes that are producers of information, e.g., those that have collected data, detected events, etc., and nodes that are consumers of information, i.e., nodes that seek data or events of certain types. Our overall goal in this paper is to construct efficient schemes allowing consumer and producer nodes to discover each other so that the desired information can be delivered quickly to those who seek it. Here, efficiency means both limiting the redundancy of where producer information is stored, as well as bounding the consumer query times. We introduce the notion of distance-sensitive information brokerage and provide schemes for efficiently bringing together information producers and consumers at a cost proportional to the separation between them -- even though neither the consumers nor...
Stefan Funke, Leonidas J. Guibas, An Nguyen, Yusu