ABSTRACT
Sensor networks are an emerging technology that interconnects spatially distributed sensing devices to monitor and interact with the surrounding physical world [1,5,8]. Each device (node) in a sensor network senses a limited neighborhood around itself with its sensing modalities. A single node, however, is o¯en unable to su«ciently characterize an area of interest due to its limited sensing capability and reliability. Ÿerefore, collaboration among a set of nodes is necessary in order to produce a complete picture of the area. Most of the time, applications are interested in retrieving information about a particular geographic region. Ÿe scope of collaboration is thus determined based on geographic locations of the nodes. Conventionally, network designers assign unique addresses to individual nodes and application programmers design actions of each node based on its address. We consider such a networking approach to be node centric, where every node has its unique identity and must be individually addressed in a network application. Ÿis is, however, ine«cient in designing sensor network applications. Sensor network applications are location centric as they pose interest in region-based information that requires collaboration among a set of nodes based on their geographic locations rather than their addresses. Ÿis chapter introduces a location-centric networking model useful in designing collaborative applications in distributed sensor networks.
