Routing Correlated Data in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Sensory data gathered from sensor nodes in physical proximity tend to exhibit strong correlation. To minimize such redundancy and hence curtail the load in wireless sensor networks with a goal to conserve energy, effective in-network fusion schemes have been extensively proposed in the literature. To this end, routing schemes supporting data fusion are extremely important as they dictate where and when sensory data streams shall intersect with each other and thus fusion will be performed. In this article we briefly articulate this problem and classify recently proposed routing schemes supporting data fusion in wireless sensor networks into three categories: routing-driven, coding-driven, and fusion-driven. We also give an overview of various algorithms in each category by summarizing their design approaches, benefits, and drawbacks.