Applying the Chinese Remainder Theorem to Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

In WSNs low complexity techniques for reducing the amount of bits flowing throughout the network are needed to decrease the bandwidth waste and increase the network lifetime. To this purpose, spatial correlation due to the high density of the deployed devices can be exploited. In this paper we propose a novel in-network aggregation technique based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), which exploits the well known advantages of the source coding while using a distributed approach with no need of coordination among network nodes. Also, an appropriate network coding mechanism based on the CRT is combined to source coding to enable lossless transmission from the sources to the sink.