Preliminaries for Topological Change Detection Using Sensor Networks

Topological changes to regions, such as merging/splitting and hole formation/elimination, are significant events in their evolution. Information about such salient changes is useful in many applications. The research reported in this paper provides theoretical foundations for such topological change detection in sensor networks. A local tree model is proposed in the spatial domain, based on which a set of types of topological changes is specified. We also present a sensor network framework which captures the necessary information required by the tree model. Both the local tree model and the sensor network framework form the foundations for detection approaches that allow sensor networks to report topological changes.