Power-aware data reduction for continuous query in wireless sensor networks

In sensor networks, continuous query is commonly used for collecting periodical data from the objects under monitoring. This query need to be carefully designed, in order to minimize the power consumption and maximize the lifetime. Data reduction techniques can be employed to decrease the size of data to be transferred in the network, and therefore save energy of sensor nodes. This paper presents a novel method for optimizing continuous query in sensor networks. Our approach is, by using packet merging or compression techniques, to reduce the data size to the best extent, so that the total performance is optimal. A weight item is specified together with a query, in which the importance of the two factors, power and delay can be expressed. Then an optimal query plan can be obtained by studying both power and time cost simultaneously, leading to the minimum cost. System models for energy and time consumptions of communication are created. Problem is formalized and algorithm is described in detail. Finally, experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.