Policy-based management for self-managing wireless sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), a large number of sensor nodes are deployed over a wide area and multi-hop communications are required between the nodes. Managing numerous sensor nodes is a very complicated task, especially when the energy issue is involved. Even though a number of ad-hoc management and network structuring approaches for WSNs have been proposed, a management framework covering the entire network management infrastructure from the messaging protocol to the network structuring algorithm has not yet been proposed. In this paper we introduce a management framework for WSNs called SNOWMAN (SeNsOr netWork MANagement) framework. It employs the policy-based management approach for letting the sensor nodes autonomously organize and manage themselves. Moreover, a new light-weight policy distribution protocol called TinyCOPS-PR and policy information base (PIB) are also developed. To facilitate scalable and localized management of sensor networks, the proposed SNOWMAN constructs a 3-tier hierarchy of regions, clusters, and sensor nodes. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is validated through actual implementation and simulation using ns-2. The simulation results reveal that the proposed framework allows smaller energy consumption for network management and longer network lifetime than the existing schemes such as LEACH and LEACH-C for practical size networks.