On optimal resource allocation in virtual sensor networks

Sensor network virtualization is a promising paradigm to move away from highly-customized, application-specific wireless sensor network deployment by opening up to the possibility of dynamically assigning general purpose physical resources to multiple stakeholder applications. In this field, this paper introduces an optimization framework to perform the allocation of physical shared resources of wireless sensor networks to multiple requesting applications. The proposed optimization framework aims to maximize the total number of applications which can share a common physical network, while accounting for the distinguishing characteristics and limitations of the wireless sensor environment (limited storage, limited processing power, limited bandwidth, tight energy consumption requirements). Due to the complexity of the optimization problem, a heuristic algorithm is also proposed. The proposed framework is finally evaluated by simulation considering realistic parameters from actual sensor nodes and deployed applications to provide a detailed performance evaluation and to assess the gain involved in letting multiple applications share a common physical network with respect to one-application, one-network vertical design approaches.