Patent ID: 8737226

Claim:
A wireless sensor network comprising: a plurality of nodes configured to receive wireless packets, wherein the plurality of nodes comprises a sink node, a plurality of routing nodes, and a plurality of sensor nodes wherein a sensor node of the plurality of sensor nodes is configured to perform a first-level aggregation to yield first level aggregation packets based on a plurality of aggregation attributes, wherein a routing node of the plurality of routing nodes is configured to perform a second-level aggregation to yield second-level aggregation packets based on the plurality of aggregation attributes, wherein the sink node is configured to disaggregate the first-level and the second-level aggregated packets, wherein the plurality of nodes are configured in a hybrid topology that comprises a mesh network and a plurality of star networks, wherein each start network of the plurality of star networks comprises one routing node interconnected with a group of sensor nodes of the plurality of sensor nodes, wherein each sensor node within the group of sensor nodes communicates only with the one routing node and does not directly communicate with any other sensor node, wherein the mesh network comprises the plurality of routing nodes and the sink node, wherein communications between the plurality of routing nodes and the sink node occur only via the mesh network.