Motivation

This subproject deals with algorithmic aspects of sensor-actor nodes that solve problems in a coordinated manner. Typical problems like routing and communication, formation of a suitable network, movement plans, clustering of nodes or localization contain algorithmic issues that are general knowledge from other application fields i.e. distributed systems. At the same time there are new aspects pertaining to sensor-actor networks due to the sensor technology used that are not yet being dealt with in traditional algorithms for ad-hoc networks which therefor requires new algorithmic models and paradigms. Relevant algorithmic differences are induced by the the following properties of sensor-actor networks:

• Scalability: The number of nodes can be huge
• Error-proneness : Sensor-actor nodes are more prone to malfunction
• Localization: Sensor-actor networks are not statically configured and their topology can be subject to rapid change
• Reprogrammability: Sensor-actor networks can change their area of application
• Energy consumption: Sensor-actor nodes generally have a limited amount of energy