Hierarchical Aggregation and Intelligent Monitoring and Control in Fault-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks

The primary idea behind deploying sensor networks is to utilize the distributed sensing capability provided by tiny, low powered, and low cost devices. Multiple sensing devices can be used cooperatively and collaboratively to capture events or monitor space more effectively than a single sensing device. The realm of applications envisioned for sensor networks is diverse including military, aerospace, industrial, commercial, environmental, and health monitoring. Typical examples include: traffic monitoring of vehicles, cross-border infiltration detection and assessment, military reconnaissance and surveillance, target tracking, habitat monitoring, and structure monitoring, to name a few. Most of the applications envisioned with sensor networks demand highly reliable, accurate, and fault-tolerant data acquisition process. In this paper, we focus on innovative approaches to deal with multivariable, multispace problem domains (data integrity, energy-efficiency, and fault-tolerant framework) in wireless sensor networks and present novel ideas that have practical implementation in developing power-aware software components for designing robust networks of sensing devices.