Real-time communication and coordination in embedded sensor networks

Sensor networks can be considered distributed computing platforms with many severe con straints including limited CPU speed memory size power and bandwidth Individual nodes in sensor networks are typically unreliable and the network topology dynamically changes possibly frequently Sensor networks can also be considered a form of ad hoc network However here also many constraints in sensor networks are di erent or more severe Sensor networks also di er because of their tight interaction with the physical environment via sensors and actuators Due to all of these di erences many solutions developed for general distributed computing plat forms and for ad hoc networks cannot be applied to sensor networks Many new and exciting research challenges exist This paper discusses the state of the art and presents the key research challenges to be solved some with initial solutions or approaches This work is partly supported by the MURI award N