On Maintaining Sensor-Actor Connectivity in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

—In wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs), a group of sensors and actors are connected by a wireless medium to perform distributed sensing and acting tasks. Sensors usually gather information in an event area and pass it on to actors, which are resource-rich devices that make decisions and perform necessary actions. Therefore, it is vital to maintain connections between sensors and actors for effective sensoractor coordination. In this paper, we first define several sensoractor connection requirements, including weak and strong actorconnectivity, and then propose several local solutions that put as many sensors as possible to sleep for energy saving purposes, while meeting different actor-connectivity requirements. We also prove the relationship between the proposed actor-connectivity and the connectivity in regular graphs, which helps with the implementation of the proposed solutions. Comprehensive performance analysis is conducted through simulations.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Jie Wu, Shuhui Yang, Mihaela Cardei
• Keywords: Actors, Communications, Effective Sensoractor Coordination, INFOCOM 2008, Sensors