Polygonal broadcast, secret maturity, and the firing sensors

This work considers communication among sensors that are deployed in a geographic region. Each sensor is a computing device with severe resource limitations, low power, slow processing and small memory. The devices are distributed (uniformly) in the geographic region. In this work we present self-stabilizing broadcast, flooding and sense of direction procedures that fit the special characteristics of the system. Imaginary polygon tilings are presented as a general scheme for supporting communication in sensor networks. Broadcasting is a common way of communicating in ad hoc mobile networks such as sensor networks. We present broadcast procedures and show how they are used by a sensor for broadcasting globally and locally, achieving sense of direction and distributing secrets that activate the sensors simultaneously at a particular time without revealing the nature of the upcoming activity.