STP: In-network aggregation through proximity queries in a Sensor Network

Event detection and notification is a common task in a Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). Efficient data aggregation and minimization of energy consumption are the great research challenges in WSN. In WSN, aggregated event information is more important than individual event information for energy saving and reliability. Proximity queries or query approximation can be used to reduce the complexity of data aggregation and energy consumption. This paper presents an efficient and scalable hybrid framework for processing spatial and temporal proximity queries in WSN which we call STP. STP builds tree structure with less overhead, and reduces the event propagation cost through proximity queries. STP reduces energy consumption by reducing the number of aggregator nodes, which ultimately increases the network life time. STP eliminates the unnecessary aggregation of events using a tunable temporal proximity threshold. We compare STP's performance with another spatial query processing method and we show that, STP performs better.