Utilizing transient resources in dynamic wireless sensor networks

In a technology where multiple networks are often deployed in concurrency, significant resource underutilization is witnessed in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). As the manufacturing and deployment costs drop, multiple networks are introduced in overlapping vicinities to satisfy new functional requirements. Mostly with dedicated goals and deterministic operation schemes, practitioners seldom investigate the usability of visible resources already deployed in the region of interest, their utilization and the accommodation for transient resources that “pass-by” with a set of functional capacities. This paper presents a framework for classifying resources that contribute to the set of functional capacities of WSNs deployed in a given region, and the mapping of functional requirements set by multiple applications on these resources. We present a utility function to cater for successful utilization of transient resources; highlighting their importance in WSN longevity as well as dynamicity. An optimal formulation is presented for this mapping, with tunable rounds that cater for the temporal behavior of the network and its constituting resources. A use case further explains this paradigm.