Information discovery in mission-critical wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are attractive for information gathering in large-scale data rich environments and can add value to mission-critical applications such as battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance. However, in order to fully exploit these networks for such applications, energy-efficient and scalable solutions for data storage and information discovery are essential. In this paper, we propose a novel method of information management in wireless sensor networks that can significantly increase network lifetime and minimize query processing delay resulting in quality of service (QoS) improvements that are of significant benefit to mission-critical applications. We propose novel methods for data dissemination, information storage and discovery that are totally distributed and also take into account the energy limitations of individual sensors. We present analytical and simulations results that prove the proposed methods of information management to offer significant improvements in the resolution of global ALL-type as well as individual ANY-type queries in comparison to current approaches. In addition, the results prove that the QoS improvements come with significant network-wide energy savings that will result in an increase of the network lifetime.