The on-demand binding between applications and information providers in loosely-coupled sensor-enabled systems raises the challenge for selecting the providers (i.e., sensor networks) supplying the most “relevant” sensory information. This paper focuses on spatial relevancy of sensory information determined by the quality and value of the desired and provided information. Specifically, the paper introduces a metric for spatial relevancy based on the concepts of quality of information (QoI) functions. We introduce expansion-proof descriptions of the QoI functions and we use those along with the the relevancy metric to (a) identify the most relevant provider among a collection of sensory information providers; and (b) select multiple providers with the objective to: (b:1) identify the minimum number of providers that cumulatively maximizes relevancy; and (b:2) considering the cost in engaging with providers, select the subset of providers that cumulatively maximizes the overall relevancy subject to a budgetary constraint. The performance and robustness of the proposed solutions are studied both analytically and by simulation for a number of provider topologies.
By: George Tychogiorgos, Chatschik Bisdikian
Published in: RC25321 in 2012
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