Patent ID: 7844687

Claim:
A method for operating a sensor network comprising a plurality of nodes, wherein the plurality of nodes comprises at least one sensor node comprising at least one sensor, the method comprising: organizing the plurality of nodes into a plurality of clusters by: receiving an assembly packet from a first node at least one node neighboring the first node, wherein the assembly packet includes a cluster indication and an instruction, wherein the instruction is either a become-base instruction or a become-remote instruction, and in response to reception of the assembly packet at the at least one node, in response to the at least one node having received a previous assembly packet, the at least one node ignoring the assembly packet, and in response to the at least one node not having received a previous assembly packet, the at least one node determining a cluster for the node based on the cluster indication in the assembly packet, modifying the assembly packet, and transmitting the modified assembly packet to at least one neighboring node, wherein modifying the assembly packet comprises: modifying the assembly packet to include a modified cluster indication, in response to the instruction being the become-base instruction, modifying the assembly packet to include the become-remote instruction, and in response to the instruction being the become-remote instruction, modifying the assembly packet to include the become-base instruction; collecting data using the at least one sensor node; and distributing storage and processing of the collected data among the plurality of clusters comprising transferring data collected from the at least one sensor node to a node in a cluster other than a cluster comprising the at least one sensor node.