Scoresheet-based event relevance determination for energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks

As wireless sensor nodes are mostly battery- powered, energy-efficient operation is a necessity to use their confined energy budget optimally. This is especially true in the logistics domain, where timely and accurate monitoring of containers is required, while the cost pressure is high. Thus, besides the need for energy efficiency, wireless sensor network deployments in logistics require cost efficiency as well. As data transmission represents the most expensive operation in terms of energy consumption and monetary costs, we present a concept for the local determination of transmission relevance in this paper. By omitting irrelevant events from transmission, the amount of data to transmit is effectively reduced. Our approach employs concepts from the business economics sector and is based on the use of scoresheets, which evaluate information on a wireless sensor node to decide whether they are "worth" transmitting or not. Thus, a scoresheet-based approach provides a viable solution for local filtering to realize energy-and cost-efficient operation of a wireless sensor network while maintaining the benefits of data fidelity and real-time event notifications.