Patent ID: 8452572

Claim:
A method, 1 comprising: gathering data from a plurality of sensor devices in a sensor network that monitors a plurality of different physical or environmental conditions, each sensor device configured to monitor a respective physical or environmental condition of the plurality of different physical or environmental conditions and report data having a data type corresponding to the respective physical or environmental condition that the sensor device monitors; determining, by a clustering device, a plurality of sensor clusters in the sensor network, each sensor cluster associated with a different data type and including a plurality of sensor devices that report similar data of the data type associated with the sensor cluster; selecting, by the clustering device, a subset of the sensor devices in each respective sensor cluster as one or more representative devices; providing, to a sensor sink, data reported by the one or more representative devices of each sensor cluster that is descriptive of monitoring performed at the one or more representative devices, while not providing data from one or more other sensor devices of the sensor cluster that are not representative devices to the sensor sink, until the plurality of sensor clusters are re-determined or un-clustered, or the representative devices are re-selected; subsequent to the providing, receiving an alarm from a sensor device of a particular sensor cluster that is not a representative device indicating a change in the physical or environmental condition that the sensor device monitors; in response to the alarm, un-clustering the sensor devices of the particular sensor cluster; and providing, to the sensor sink, data reported by the plurality of sensor devices that were once in the particular sensor cluster and that are now operating un-clustered.