Patent ID: 8804545
Filing Date: 2014-08-12
Classification: H04B,H04W

Abstract:
1. A method for a monitoring network comprising: transmitting a plurality of data packets from a plurality of sensor nodes to a monitoring station through a plurality of sink nodes, wherein each sensor node performs the step of generating said data packets, wherein generating comprises generating a source field and at least one attribute field in each data packet; sending the data packets from the sink nodes to the monitoring station through a satellite; and dynamically associating, by the monitoring station, the sensor nodes to the sink nodes so that the data packets sent by the sensor nodes are transmitted to the satellite through only one selected sink node among said plurality of sink nodes; wherein each sink node performs the step of generating a plurality of control packets, each control packet including a sensor field, univocally identifying a generating sensor node of said plurality of sensor nodes, a sink field, univocally identifying the sink node generating the control packet, and a metric portion carrying quality of service information relating to transmission conditions between the generating sensor node and the monitoring station, the metric portion carrying quality of service information comprising energy consumption, sending delay, sink delivery load, and satellite channel fading level; and wherein the metric portions of the control packets include a plurality of metric fields, the step of dynamically associating the sensor nodes to the sink nodes comprises: reading the sensor fields, the sink fields and the metric fields of the control packets; generating a matrix structure including, for each pair of sensor nodes-sink nodes, the received metric fields; computing, for each sensor node, an ideal vector structure having a plurality of maximum values, each maximum value being selected as a maximum among analogous metric fields associated with a same sensor node and different sink nodes in the matrix structure; computing distances between the ideal vector and the metric fields of the different sink node; and selecting, for each sensor node, a sink node having a minimum computed distance.