A framework for spatio-temporal query processing over wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks consist of nodes with the ability to measure, store, and process data, as well as to communicate wirelessly with nodes located in their wireless range. Users can issue queries over the network, e.g., retrieve information from nodes within a specified region, in applications such as environmental monitoring. Since the sensors have typically only a limited power supply, energy-efficient processing of the queries over the network is an important issue. In this paper, we introduce a general framework for distributed processing of spatio-temporal queries in a sensor network that has two main phases: (1) routing the query to the spatial area specified in the query; (2) collecting and processing the information from the nodes relevant to the query. Within this framework, different algorithms can be designed independently for each of the two phases. We also propose novel algorithms for this framework, one for the first phase and two for the second phase. In an extensive experimental evaluation we study the performance of these algorithms in terms of energy consumption, under varying conditions. The results allow us to recommend the most energy efficient solution, given a network and a spatiotemporal query.