A Local Facility Location Algorithm for Sensor Networks

In this paper we address a well-known facility location problem (FLP) in a sensor network environment. The problem deals with finding the optimal way to provide service to a (possibly) very large number of clients. We show that a variation of the problem can be solved using a local algorithm. Local algorithms are extremely useful in a sensor network scenario. This is because they allow the communication range of the sensor to be restricted to the minimum, they can operate in routerless networks, and they allow complex problems to be solved on the basis of very little information, gathered from nearby sensors. The local facility location algorithm we describe is entirely asynchronous, seamlessly supports failures and changes in the data during calculation, poses modest memory and computational requirements, and can provide an anytime solution which is guaranteed to converge to the exact same one that would be computed by a centralized algorithm given the entire data.