| Emerging technologies in low-power microsensors, actuators, embedded processors, and RF radios have facilitated the deployment of large-scale sensor networks and enabled such networks to monitor physical environment at unprecedented granularity in both time and space. Networks of such devices typically consist of hundreds or even thousands of small, power-constrained sensor nodes deployed in remote locations where they are expected to monitor for months or years at a time. Wireless sensor networks are revolutionizing the ways of collecting information from the physical world, but presenting significant research challenges for both the networking and data management communities.; In this dissertation, we examine research issues and technical challenges associated with data management and network communication in wireless sensor networks, focusing on design reliable, efficient and effective spatial network services in supporting location-aware wireless sensor networks. We propose architectural and algorithmic approaches, tailored towards power-efficient dissemination, acquisition and aggregation of sensor readings. Data reduction, in-network processing and inactivating sensor nodes have been explored to perform aggressive energy optimization. We investigate fundamental research problems, propose many original ideas in the context of location-aware sensor networks, and evaluate them through extensive simulation studies. This dissertation reveals profound insights into the design of spatial network services provisioning for fully realizing the potential of wireless sensor networks. |
