Information integration and synchronization in distributed sensor networks

The computational, i.e. architectural, algorithmic, and synchronization, issues related to competitive information integration in a distributed sensor network (DSN) are addressed. The proposed DSN architecture consists of a set of binary trees whose roots are fully connected. Each node of the tree has a processing element and one or more sensors associated with it. The information from each of the sensors has to be integrated in such a manner that the communication costs are low and that the real time needs are met. An information integration algorithm that has a low message cost (linear in the number of nodes of the network) and a low distributed computation cost is presented. The problems associated with synchronizing information to be integrated in the presence of imperfect clocks is considered. The fault tolerant features of the network and the integration algorithm are discussed