From Algorithms to Sensor Networks

ABSTRACT

Wireless and/or mobile networks are an excellent playground for researchers with an algorithmic background. Many research problems turn out to be variants of classic graph theory problems. In particular the rapidly growing areas of ad hoc and sensor networks demand new solutions for timeless graph theory problems, because i) wireless devices have lower bandwidth and ii) wireless devices are less dependable and therefore the topology of the network changes rather frequently. As a consequence, algorithms for wireless and/or mobile networks should have i) as little communication as possible and should ii) run as fast as possible. Both goals can only be achieved by developing algorithms requiring a small number of communication rounds only (so-called local algorithms). In this work we present a few algorithmic applications in wireless networking, such as clustering, topology control and geo-routing. Each section is supplemented with an open problem.