Lecture

Reducing power consumption in wireless sensor networks
by data aggregation/compression

Speaker:	Massimo Vecchio
Date:	Friday, 12 December 2008
Time:	15:00-16:30
Location:	Seminar Room 1, FORTH. Heraklion, Crete
Host:	P. Tsakalides

Abstract:

Energy is a primary constraint in the design and deployment of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), since sensor nodes are typically powered by batteries with a limited capacity. Energy efficiency is generally achieved by reducing radio communication, for instance, limiting transmission/reception of data. Data compression and distributed aggregation can be a valuable tool in this direction. The limited resources available in a sensor node demand, however, the development of specifically designed algorithms. In this talk we try to tackle the issue of reducing power consumption in these tiny devices firstly using a novel aggregation technique exploiting some basic fuzzy logic principles. Then, taking lessons from JPEG, we analyse a simple lossless entropy compression algorithm by highlighting how its low complexity and the small amount of memory required for its execution make this algorithm particularly suited to be used on available commercial sensor nodes. Finally, in the last part of the talk we outline a multiobjective evolutionary optimization framework able to transform the previous lossless compression algorithm into a lossy one, without introducing complexity overhead and sensible distortion in the reconstructed signal.

Bio:

Massimo Vecchio has been a PhD Candidate in Computer Science and Engineering at IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies (Italy) since February 2006. His research interests include power aware data compression and distributed aggregation algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks, where he applied techniques inherited from computational intelligence (mainly fuzzy logic and multiobjective evolutionary algorithms). He is affiliated to the Computational Intelligence Group at the Department of Information Engineering, University of Pisa (Italy), though he is currently involved in a Research internship at INRIA (France) dealing with efficient data dissemination protocols for wireless sensor networks. Massimo Vecchio received the Laurea degree in Computer Engineering (Magna cum Laude) from University of Pisa (Italy) in 2005.

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