Shape Segmentation and Applications in Sensor Networks

—Many sensor network protocols in the literature implicitly assume that sensor nodes are deployed uniformly inside a simple geometric region. When the real deployment deviates from that, we often observe degraded performance. It is desirable to have a generic approach to handle a sensor field with complex shape. In this paper, we propose a segmentation algorithm that partitions an irregular sensor field into nicely shaped pieces such that algorithms and protocols that assume a nice sensor field can be applied inside each piece. Across the segments, problem dependent structures specify how the segments and data collected in these segments are integrated. This unified topology-adaptive spatial partitioning would benefit many settings that currently assume a nicely shaped sensor field. Our segmentation algorithm does not require sensor locations and only uses network connectivity information. Each node is given a ‘flow direction’ that directs away from the network boundary. A...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Xianjin Zhu, Rik Sarkar, Jie Gao
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2007, Sensor, Sensor Network Protocols, Sensor Nodes