Selecting Relevant Sensor Providers for Meeting "Your" Quality Information Needs

The accelerated, on-demand deployment of sensor networks raises the challenge of selecting the providers supplying the most "relevant" sensory information to a user\´s needs. This paper considers the spatial relevancy of information provided that accounts for the spatial gradations in the quality of the information desired and, specifically, considers: (a) selecting the minimum number of providers that cumulatively maximizes the information relevancy; and (b) considering a cost per provider, selecting the subset of providers that cumulatively maximizes the overall information relevancy subject to a budgetary constraint. The performance and robustness of the proposed solutions are studied both analytically and by simulation for a number of provider topologies.