A brief survey of self-organization in wireless sensor networks
Many natural and man-made systems exhibit self-organization, where interactions among components lead to system-wide patterns of behavior. This paper first introduces current, scientific understanding of self-organizing systems and then identifies the main models investigated by computer scientists seeking to apply self-organization to design large, distributed systems. Subsequently, the paper surveys research that uses models of self-organization in wireless sensor networks to provide a variety of functions: sharing processing and communication capacity; forming and maintaining structures; conserving power; synchronizing time; configuring software components; adapting behavior associated with routing, with disseminating and querying for information, and with allocating tasks;, and providing resilience by repairing faults and resisting attacks. The paper closes with a summary of open issues that must be addressed before self-organization can be applied routinely during design and deployment of senor networks and other distributed, computer systems. Copyright (c) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
self-organization sensor networks distributed systems wireless networks