Data Dissemination Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks Client/Server versus Mobile Agent Paradigms

Mobile Agents (MAs) are referred to as autonomous application programs with the inherent ability to move between nodes towards a goal completion. In the context of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), MAs may be used in the process of combining data from different sources aiming at maximizing the useful information content. MAs have been initially developed to replace the Client/Server model which exhibits many disadvantages, particularly in WSN environments (e.g. heavy bandwidth usage and high energy consumption). Mobile Agents can be used to significantly reduce the cost of communication, especially through low bandwidth, by moving the processing function to the data rather than bring the data to a central processor. The main objective of this paper is to analyze some Client/Server and Mobile Agent data dissemination protocols in WSN.