P2P Based Data Management in WSNs: Experiences and Lessons Learnt from a Real-World Deployment

WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) has attracted wide attention from researchers over the recent years, with a major focus on the issues of data transport and management. Many traditional data management protocols are being developed for WSN and are evaluated using simulations only. Unfortunately there are very less protocols which are evaluated on real testbeds. Recently, P2P (Peer to Peer) protocols are gaining much attention to be utilized by WSNs since both have many similarities. However, a WSN faces resource constraints in terms of limited power supply, small storage capacity, low computing power and connectivity issue. Contrary, DTM (Data Transport and Management) protocols developed for P2P systems cause inefficient use of resources in a WSN. Lately, a VCP (Virtual Cord Protocol) has been proposed that uses P2P techniques for information management in a WSN and provides the efficient resource utilization. In this paper, we present the implementation and deployment of VCP to show its performance on a real deployment scenario using Mica2 motes.