Collaborative resource allocation in wireless sensor networks

Traditional real-time resource allocation algorithms assume that the available resources in a system such as total CPU and network bandwidth do not change over time. However, in wireless sensor networks, the amount of available resources on the devices and the communication channel may not be constant for all times: for instance, a node can be turned off in some time intervals to increase its battery lifetime. Since sensor networks have limited network capacity and computational capabilities, it is crucial to optimally assign the available resources among all the active tasks. In this paper, we propose a fast online resource allocation algorithm (CoRAl) to dynamically reconfigure a sensor network whenever a new hot spot occurs (e.g., a new intruder is detected) or a node's activity changes (i.e., sleep vs. active mode). Our experimental results show that CoRAl provides always near-optimal resource allocation while keeping its online overhead low.