CSN: a network protocol for serving dynamic queries in large-scale wireless sensor networks

A fundamental problem that confronts future applications of sensor networks is how to locate efficiently the sensor node that stores a particular data item. Distributed hash table (DHT) based Internet peer-to-peer (P2P) protocols provide near-optimum data lookup times for queries made on networks of distributed nodes. A generic mapping of these protocols to sensor networks is, however, perceived as difficult (Ratnasamy, S. et al., Mobile Networks and Applications, - MONET 2003). We present a novel DHT based network protocol for sensor networks - chord for sensor networks (CSN) - for which bounded times for data lookup, in the order of O(logN) messages, can be achieved in an energy efficient manner. CSN makes the system lifetime of the sensor network proportional to its effective use. Furthermore, CSN scales well to large-scale sensor networks when the information about other nodes logarithmically increases with an increase in the number of sensor nodes.