A Study of Approximate Data Management Techniques for Sensor Networks

Recent developments in sensor network technology have enabled the instrumentation of the physical world with smart devices for monitoring purposes. A large variety of applications could benefit from the pervasive deployment of inexpensive wireless sensor nodes, ranging from environmental monitoring to emergency detection and response. A significant challenge is to prolong the monitoring operation of sensor nodes by efficiently using their limited energy, bandwidth and computation resources. In this paper, we survey approximate data management techniques for sensor networks that exploit the tolerance of most applications to small inaccuracies in the reported data in order to extend the network lifetime.