Composite Event Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Sensor networks can be used for event alarming applications. To date, in most of the proposed schemes, the raw or aggregated sensed data is periodically sent to a data consuming center. However, with this scheme, the occurrence of an emergency event such as a fire is hardly reported in a timely manner which is a strict requirement for event alarming applications. In sensor networks, it is also highly desired to conserve energy so that the network lifetime can be maximized. Furthermore, to ensure the quality of surveillance, some applications require that if an event occurs, it needs to be detected by at least k sensors where k is a user-defined parameter. In this work, we examine the timely energy-efficient k-watching event detection problem (TEKWEO). A topology-and-routing-supported algorithm is proposed which constructs a set of detection sets that satisfy the short notification time, energy conservation, and tunable quality of surveillance requirements for event alarming applications. Simulation results are shown to validate the proposed algorithm.