Integrated Sensing: Reactive Sensor Networks

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

The vision of this proposed work is to create more versatile information systems by using autonomous and distributed sensor networks: hundreds of small sensors, equipped with limited memory and actuation capabilities will autonomously organize themselves and move to track a source and convey information about its location to a human user, and to the rest of the team. Such distributed active sensor networks are pervasive computing systems, well-suited for tasks in extreme environments, especially when the environmental model and the task specifications are uncertain and the system has to adapt to it. To create active sensor networks capable of such applications, a fundamental goal of this research is to develop a science base for distributed sensor network control and information gathering and coordination. This is a considerable challenge, which we propose to meet by the synergistic integration of the following directions of work: (1) new ideas for communication in sensor networks; (2) new ideas for developing adaptive active control and coordination in sensor networks; (3) new ideas for information gathering and aggregation in sensor networks; and (4) experiments grounded on realistic scenarios that measure empirically the performance and scalability of the proposed communication and control algorithms. More specifically, the central challenges for this proposed work are focused on developing, implementing and evaluating a suite of scalable network protocols that (1) guarantee message delivery; (2) are fault tolerant; (3) maximize the network lifetime; and (4) are adaptive to the environment and to the task.