Self-organization of Very Large Sensor Networks Based on Small-worlds Principles

We study networks consisting of a very large number of tiny and inexpensive sensors and introduce SWAS (Small-Worlds of Anonymous Sensors), an algorithm combining self-organization based upon small-worlds principles and Medium Access Control based upon a stack protocol for VLSNs and we report on a preliminary study of the algorithm. The nodes of Very Large Sensor Networks (VLSN) have limited resources; to reduce the power consumption the processor is less powerful and the amount of storage available is smaller than those of traditional sensor networks. Moreover, the nodes are indistinguishable from one another; they do not have a physical address, as required by the traditional communication protocols. VLSNs mimic biological systems where individual cells of the same type are indistinguishable. Small-worlds networks combine two desirable features of networks namely high clustering and small path length.