Transmission Scheduling in Spatio-Temporal Process Monitoring Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor network transmission scheduling refers to determining how and when the sensors in the network report their measurements. Intelligent scheduling could by used to lower the necessary number of transmissions, and reduce network congestion and extend battery life. In recent years, extending battery life of the sensors is a research problem that has received much attention in literature. This can be achieved through both hardware and software means. In this paper, we present a transmission scheduling approach for wireless sensor networks that has the purpose of monitoring and reporting measurements of some spatio-temporal process. This is achieved through the development of a geometric approach to an individual node's coverage model that is a function of the estimation accuracy in a region near the node. Then, for an arbitrary number of nodes, we will show how this model could be used to reduce how often a sensor needs to reports its measurements to a fusion center.