MICS - Data dissemination in mobile ad hoc sensor environments

The goal of this work is to advance protocols for application driven non-uniform information dissemination and to integrate them into a new data management middleware for large scale sensor networks. The project targets intelligent environments created by augmenting a space with a large number of wireless sensors and exploiting the data generated to take some action. Typically sensor network research focuses on collecting this information in a single place for analysis, considering optimizations from local aggregation or en-route data processing. Although such centralized collection supports a variety of applications, it does not consider applications with mobile observers moving through the environment, using the sensed information centered around themselves.This project looks at data distribution protocols for the maintenance of a multiple, distributed data centers where the sources of information as well as the data centers themselves can be fixed or mobile. It considers a new property of applications in this environment for which the accuracy of the data required varies with the distance from the source. We refer to this as a non-uniform information requirement. It also investigates novel approaches to designing optimal adaptive algorithms in highly-dynamic environments.