Topology-Aware Energy Efficient Task Assignment for Collaborative In-Network Processing in Distributed Sensor Systems

Abstract In the emerging networked sensor systems, collaborative in-network processing provides a viable solution to overcome the limited energy and resource constraints of one single node. In this novel computing paradigm, it is very critical to perform task assignment. In this paper, we formally model TETA, an energy efficient topology-aware real time task assignment problem in wireless sensor networks, and prove its NP-completeness. We also propose an ant-based meta-heuristic algorithm to solve the TETA problem. We implement our algorithm and conduct experiments based on a simulation environment. The experimental results show that our approach can archive significant energy saving and improve the system lifetime effectively as well.