Visions and Challenges for Sensor Network Collaboration in the Cloud

The rapid growth in sensor network coverage, aided by the use of smartphones as capable sensing devices, leads to an enormous amount of gathered data from a multitude of different sources. However, generally data from one specific sensor network is only used by a very limited set of users and applications. This wastes a potentially greater usefulness for other, related data sinks that could use this additional input to improve their performance or services. In this paper, we outline visions and challenges for a widespread application of sensor network collaboration in the sense of sharing and exchanging information. We also describe a basic cloud-based architecture enabling this collaboration by providing the required support to store, manage and combine the gathered data. In particular, we include collaboration between sensor networks themselves to optimize performance, a facet that was up to now neglected in literature.