Load-Balancing Query Hotspots for Next-Generation Sensornet

The expected architecture of next-generation sensornets raises the need for load-balanced point-to-point routing protocols to cope with different sources of traffic skewness. Query hotspots are one of these skewness sources that highly impact the sensornet performance. In this paper, we present a set of content-based load-balancing primitives to be used on top of any point- to-point routing protocol in order to detect and decompose query hotspots. Our schemes are based on local hotspot detection by the sensors targeted by queries. Hotspots are then decomposed by avoiding duplication when forwarding results to the query issuers. Our simulation results show the high benefit, in terms of network lifetime and throughput, of using our schemes to load-balance query hotspots of different sizes.