Duty cycle aware spatial query processing in wireless sensor networks

The recent evolution in sensor node location technology has spurred the development of a special type of in-network processing for wireless sensor networks (WSN), called spatial query processing. These queries require data from nodes within a region (called region of interest) defined by the users. The state of the art of spatial query processing considers, in general, that nodes are always on. However, nodes can go to sleep mode (turn off the radio in duty cycles) in order to save energy. This work proposes an energy-efficient in-network spatial query processing mechanism that assumes nodes having no knowledge about their neighbors. The proposed mechanism is able to process spatial queries without the necessity of periodic beacon transmissions for neighbor table updates or for synchronization. Hence, it can work properly over different types of duty cycle algorithms. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.