Towards prolonged lifetime for large-scale Information-Centric Sensor Networks

Information-Centric Sensor Networks (ICSNs) are a class of context-aware communication networks that provide an infrastructure for knowledge-based intelligent information service provisioning to anyone, anywhere and at any time. It provides the sensed information to the end-user based on application requirements. To cater to the needs of ICSNs applications, WSNs may need to be deployed on a very large scale. Maintaining network connectivity and longevity in such a large scale deployment of sensor nodes, while catering to the application and service requirements of the ICSN is a challenging task because sensor nodes are very resource constrained in terms of power, communication range and processing capabilities. Hence, we propose the use of cognitive nodes in the underlying WSN, which can help to achieve better management of the sensor network's resources. The cognitive nodes make use of the requested information to learn the dynamic network environment, and make decisions based on the application requirements and current network conditions. Cognitive nodes will use information stored in their knowledge base to help with resource management in the sensor network while catering to the service requirements of the ICSN. The main contribution of this work is to provide a strategy for their deployment in large-scale WSNs used in ICSN applications.