Tethys: A Distributed Algorithm for Intelligent Aggregation in Sensor Networks

One key issue in wireless sensor networks is energy efficiency. Aggregation techniques attempt to minimize the energy expended in communication by processing the data in the network rather than forwarding it all to a central point for processing. However, the naive application of this technique can result in a net increase in total energy expenditure due to the computational costs of the processing. In this paper, we present a new model for aggregation in wireless sensor networks, incorporating both the amount of data reduction achieved by the aggregation function and its associated computation costs. We then use this model to create a powerful, lightweight, distributed aggregation tree creation protocol, called Tethys, suitable for implementation in wireless sensor networks. We show that our protocol provides significantly lower energy consumption than protocols which do not take the amount of data reduction and computational cost of aggregation into consideration.