Policy-Based Management for Self-Managing Wireless Sensor Networks

SUMMARY In a wireless sensor network (WSN), a large number ofsensor nodes are deployed over a wide area and multi-hop communica-tions are required between the nodes. Managing numerous sensor nodesis a very complicated task, especially when the energy issue is involved.Even though a number of ad-hoc management and network structuring ap-proaches for WSNs have been proposed, a management framework cov-ering the entire network management infrastructure from the messagingprotocol to the network structuring algorithm has not yet been proposed. Inthis paper we introduce a management framework for WSNs called SNOW-MAN (SeNsOr netWork MANagement) framework. It employs the policy-based management approach for letting the sensor nodes autonomously or-ganize and manage themselves. Moreover, a new light-weight policy dis-tribution protocol called TinyCOPS-PR and policy information base (PIB)are also developed. To facilitate scalable and localized management ofsensor networks, the proposed SNOWMAN constructs a 3-tier hierarchyof regions, clusters, and sensor nodes. The effectiveness of the proposedframework is validated through actual implementation and simulation us-ing ns-2. The simulation results reveal that the proposed framework allowssmaller energy consumption for network management and longer networklifetime than the existing schemes such as LEACH and LEACH-C for prac-tical size networks.