Distributed Policy-Based Management for Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to hardware resource limitations in Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), devices on WSN may hold up to 20 policies at any given time [1]. This number may not be sufficient at all times and has a huge impact on restricting the management capabilities and tasks that can be performed on the device as well as the whole WSN. The design choice of an existing policy-based WSN platform causes the policy engine to execute policies serially [2]; therefore, when multiple policies are triggered by an event, the order of the execution is not persistent [2]. This phenomena causes instability and unpredictability in the system because it may cause different policies' orders to be executed every time the same event is triggered. The architecture of many existing or proposed policy-based WSN platforms relies on a local policy repository on the node to access any required policy [1] [2] [3]. This architecture choice raises many issues, mainly exposing the users to serious difficulties since they have to store policies on the targeted node only, creating serious administrative difficulties. The goal of this research is to create a new framework for distributed policy-based management for WSNs to overcome the existing policy-based WSN platform limitations. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]