A Self-management Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a large number of sensor nodes are deployed over a large area and long distances and multi-hop communication is required between nodes. So managing numerous wireless sensor nodes directly is very complex, and is not efficient. The management of WSNs must be autonomic self-managed with a minimum of human interference, and robust to changes in network states. To do this, we propose a scalable self-management framework for WSNs called SNOWMAN (SeNsOr netWork MANagement) framework. Our SNOWMAN framework is based on hierarchical management architecture and on the policy-based network management (PBNM) paradigm. SNOWMAN can reduce the costs of managing sensor nodes and of the communication among them using hierarchical clustering architecture. SNOWMAN can also provide administrators with a solution to simplify and automate the management of WSNs using PBNM paradigm.

This research was supported by the MIC (Ministry of Information and Communication), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program supervised by the IITA (Institute of Information Technology Assessment).