WSN09-3: Fault-tolerant Event Boundary Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Event boundary detection is in and of itself a useful application in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Typically, it includes the detection of a large-scale spatial phenomenon such as the transportation front line of a contamination or the diagnosis of network health. In this paper, we present FEBD, a fully distributed and light-weight fault-tolerant event boundary detection scheme. FEBD features an enhanced (nonparametric) statistical model that supports localized detection among neighboring nodes. To enhance detection accuracy, FEBD also introduces an error suppression technique prior to the determination of boundary nodes. The proposed scheme shows a much better detection accuracy and fault tolerance properties as compared to the previous models. The proposed FEBD is evaluated by extensive simulations, and presents very good detection accuracy, even when sensor fault probability is as high as 20%.