The Impact of Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks are distributed event-based systems that differ from traditional communication networks in several ways: sensor networks have severe energy constraints, redundant low-rate data, and many-to-one flows. Datacentric mechanisms that perform in-network aggregation of data are needed in this setting for energy-efficient information flow. In this paper we model data-centric routing and compare its performance with traditional end-toend routing schemes. We examine the impact of sourcedestination placement and communication network density on the energy costs and delay associated with data aggregation. We show that data-centric routing offers significant performance gains across a wide range of operational scenarios. We also examine the complexity of optimal data aggregation, showing that although it is an NP-hard problem in general, there exist useful polynomial-time special cases.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: ICDCSW
• Authors: Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Deborah Estrin, Stephen B. Wicker
• Keywords: Data Aggregation, Data-centric Routing, Distributed And Parallel Computing, ICDCSW 2002, Sensor Networks