Scalable structure-free data fusion on wireless sensor networks

Recent advancements in sensor technology, wireless networks and consequently wireless sensor networks and the increase in their applications in different fields have led to their great importance. One of the most important challenges of such networks is the distributed management of the huge amount of data produced by sensors in network to reduce data traffic in network and minimize the energy consumption. In this research, a distributed, dynamic fusion algorithm is introduced. Since the proposed method is dynamic, the number of neighbors sending data to a node is not known in advance. So in order to increase the chances of different data to meet, the node waiting time is calculated. By the end of waiting time, the node performs data fusion and sends the fused data to the best neighbor chosen by the proposed best neighbor algorithm. This procedure continues until data reaches the sink. The proposed algorithm, while being scalable and convergent, outperforms similar methods in terms of number of transmissions, traffic load and energy consumption.