Design and comparison of lightweight group management strategies in EnviroSuite

Tracking is one of the major applications of wireless sensor networks. EnviroSuite, as a programming paradigm, provides a comprehensive solution for programming tracking applications, wherein moving environmental targets are uniquely and identically mapped to logical objects to raise the level of programming abstraction. Such mapping is done through distributed group management algorithms, which organize nodes in the vicinity of targets into groups, and maintain the uniqueness and identity of target representation such that each target is given a consistent name. Challenged by tracking fast-moving targets, this paper explores, in a systematic way, various group management optimizations including semi-dynamic leader election, piggy-backed heartbeats, and implicit leader election. The resulting tracking protocol, Lightweight EnviroSuite, is integrated into a surveillance system. Empirical performance evaluation on a network of 200 XSM motes shows that, due to these optimizations, Lightweight EnviroSuite is able to track targets more than 3 times faster than the fastest targets trackable by the original EnviroSuite even when 20% of nodes fail.