Redundancy Analysis and a Distributed Self-Organization Protocol for Fault-Tolerant Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensor nodes in a distributed sensor network can fail due to a variety of reasons, e.g., harsh environmental conditions, sabotage, battery failure, and component wear-out. Since many wireless sensor networks are intended to operate in an unattended manner after deployment, failing nodes cannot be replaced or repaired during field operation. Therefore, by designing the network to be fault-tolerant, we can ensure that a wireless sensor network can perform its surveillance and tracking tasks even when some nodes in the network fail. In this paper, we describe a fault-tolerant self organization scheme that designates a set of backup nodes to replace failed nodes and maintain a backbone for coverage and communication. The proposed scheme does not require a centralized server for monitoring node failures and for designating backup nodes to replace failed nodes. It operates in a fully distributed manner and it requires only localized communication. This scheme has been implemented on top of an energy-efficient self-organization technique for sensor networks. The proposed fault-tolerance-node selection procedure can tolerate a large number of node failures using only localized communication, without losing either sensing coverage or communication connectivity.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 2007
Accession Number
ADA470400

Entities

People

  • Krishnendu Chakrabarty
  • Yi Zou

Organizations

  • Duke University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computer Science
  • Computer-Aided Design
  • Computers
  • Detectors
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Engineering
  • Fault Tolerance
  • Integrated Circuits
  • Mesh Networks
  • Microfluidics
  • Military Research
  • Networks
  • Self Organizing Systems
  • Sensor Networks
  • Signal Processing
  • Wireless Communications
  • Wireless Sensor Networks

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Applied Combinatorial Optimization and Logic Circuit Design.
  • Computer Networking
  • Inertial Navigation Systems.