What is Collaborative sensor networks

Sensor networks have been widely deployed in all kinds of applications. In the near future, we expect to witness the proliferation of sensor networks with a variety of functions that requires a comprehensive collaboration mechanism among them. Specific designs are necessary to manipulate a fabric of multiple sensor networks, facilitate the collaboration among them, and support efficient data sensing, aggregation, storage, transmission, and query processing. In this chapter, through comparison and analysis of existing works, we present a new taxonomy of collaborative sensor networks based on the architectures and the methodologies of organizing different modules of a system. We find that a cross-layer design simultaneously guaranteeing the energy efficiency of underlying sensor networks and the quality of services for users is a challenging issue which has not been well studied. We also discuss the design space in this field and point out potential research directions.