Decentralized control of adaptive sampling in wireless sensor networks

  • Authors:
  • Johnsen Kho;Alex Rogers;Nicholas R. Jennings

  • Affiliations:
  • University of Southampton, Southampton, UK;University of Southampton, Southampton, UK;University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN)
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The efficient allocation of the limited energy resources of a wireless sensor network in a way that maximizes the information value of the data collected is a significant research challenge. Within this context, this article concentrates on adaptive sampling as a means of focusing a sensor's energy consumption on obtaining the most important data. Specifically, we develop a principled information metric based upon Fisher information and Gaussian process regression that allows the information content of a sensor's observations to be expressed. We then use this metric to derive three novel decentralized control algorithms for information-based adaptive sampling which represent a trade-off in computational cost and optimality. These algorithms are evaluated in the context of a deployed sensor network in the domain of flood monitoring. The most computationally efficient of the three is shown to increase the value of information gathered by approximately 83%, 27%, and 8% per day compared to benchmarks that sample in a naïve nonadaptive manner, in a uniform nonadaptive manner, and using a state-of-the-art adaptive sampling heuristic (USAC) correspondingly. Moreover, our algorithm collects information whose total value is approximately 75% of the optimal solution (which requires an exponential, and thus impractical, amount of time to compute).