Robust Top-k Query Evaluation in Wireless Sensor Networks

In many applications of sensor networks including environmental monitoring and security surveillance, a large volume of sensed data generated by sensors is needed to be either collected at the base station or aggregated within the network to respond to user queries. However, due to the high failure rate of wireless communication, robust query processing is very important for some critical queries in sensor networks by dealing with the messages loss in sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a novel localized and adaptive algorithm for robust top-k query evaluation in wireless sensor networks, which strives the right tradeoff between the energy consumption and the accuracy of obtained results. We finally conduct extensive experiments by simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm on real datasets. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is energy-efficient when meeting the specified result accuracy requirement.