Structure-Free Protocols for Large Scale Sensor Networks

Prasun Sinha

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Ohio State University

Friday, February 23, 2007
Talk: 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
3105 Engineering

Host: Li Xiao

Designing large-scale sensor networks with long lifetime requires rethinking about fundamental protocol design paradigms. Existing network protocols for data collection, storage, and retrieval are based on network structures that are expensive to compute and maintain. This leads to high energy consumption, especially for networks that monitor dynamic events. We are investigating a new paradigm of protocol design termed "structure-free design" that does not rely on the use of pre-computed structures. Instead, the protocols leverage the flexibility and robustness of anycasting -- a technique of transmitting to any one among a suitably chosen subset of neighboring nodes. Based on the paradigm of structure-free protocol design, we have successfully designed and implemented protocols in TinyOS for supporting efficient data aggregation and for ultra low duty-cycle network operation.

Prasun Sinha is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Ohio State University since 2003. He worked at Bell Labs from 2001 to 2003. He holds a PhD from UIUC (2001), MS from Michigan State University (1997), and a B. Tech. degree from IIT Delhi (1995). He received the NSF CAREER award in 2006. His research focuses on design of protocols for sensor networks and mesh networks.