In this paper, we study the problem of processing continuous range queries in a hierarchical wireless sensor network. Recently, as the size of sensor networks increases due to the growth of ubiquitous computing environments and wireless networks, building wireless sensor networks in a hierarchical configuration is put forth as a practical approach. Contrasted with the traditional approach of building networks in a “flat” structure using sensor devices of the same capability, the hierarchical approach deploys devices of higher-capability in a higher tier, i.e., a tier closer to the server. While query processing in flat sensor networks has been widely studied, the study on query processing in hierarchical sensor networks has been inadequate. In wireless sensor networks, the main costs that should be considered are the energy for sending data and the storage for storing queries. There is a trade-off between these two costs. Based on this, we first propose a progressive processing method that effectively processes a large number of continuous range queries in hierarchical sensor networks. The proposed method uses the query merging technique proposed by as the basis. In addition, the method considers the trade-off between the two costs. More specifically, it works toward reducing the storage cost at lower-tier nodes by merging more queries and toward reducing the energy cost at higher-tier nodes by merging fewer queries (thereby reducing “false alarms”). We then present how to build a hierarchical sensor network that is optimalwith respect to the weighted sum of the two costs. This allows for a cost-based systematic control of the trade-off based on the relative importance between the storage and energy in a given network environment and application. Experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a near-optimal control between the storage and energy and reduces the cost by 1.002 - 3.210 times compared with the cost achieved using the flat (i.e., non-hierarchical) setup as in the work by
In many sensor networks, data or events are named by attributes. Many of these attributes have scalar values, so one natural way to query events of interest is to use a multi-dimensional range query. An example is: List all events whose temperature lies between 50° and 60°, and whose light levels lie between 10 and 15. Such queries are useful for correlating events occurring within the network. In this paper, we describe the design of a distributed index that scalably supports multi-dimensional range queries. Our distributed index for multi-dimensional data (or DIM) uses a novel geographic embedding of a classical index data structure, and is built upon the GPSR geographic routing algorithm. Our analysis reveals that, under reasonable assumptions about query distributions, DIMs scale quite well with network size (both insertion and query costs scale as O(√N)). In detailed simulations, we show that in practice, the insertion and query costs of other alternatives are sometimes an order of magnitude more than the costs of DIMs, even for moderately sized network. Finally, experiments on a small scale testbed validate the feasibility of DIMs. We discuss the design of an acquisitional query processor for data collection in sensor networks. Acquisitional issues are those that pertain to where, when, and how often data is physically acquired (sampled) and delivered to query processing operators. By focusing on the locations and costs of acquiring data, we are able to significantly reduce power consumption over traditional passive systems that assume the a priori existence of data. We discuss simple extensions to SQL for controlling data acquisition, and show how acquisitional issues influence query optimization, dissemination, and execution. We evaluate these issues in the context of TinyDB, a distributed query processor for smart sensor devices, and show how acquisitional techniques can provide significant reductions in power consumption on our sensor devices.