A simple and robust virtual infrastructure for massively deployed wireless sensor networks

The networks considered in this paper consist of tiny energy constrained commodity sensors massively deployed in an area of interest. Overlaying a virtual infrastructure over a physical network is a time-honored strategy for conquering scale. The main contribution of this paper is an energy-efficient protocol that self-organizes an amorphous mass of massively deployed tiny sensors into a wireless sensor network. The resulting virtual infrastructure is simple and can be leveraged by a number of different protocols.