Decentralized Coding Algorithms for Distributed Storage in Wireless Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces decentralized Fountain code algorithms for large-scale wireless sensor networks, enabling robust, local, and simple data recovery without global network knowledge or routing tables.

Contribution

It presents the first truly distributed coding algorithms that do not require nodes to know global network parameters or maintain routing tables.

Findings

Algorithms enable data recovery from any k(1+ε) nodes

Nodes do not need to know total network size or connectivity

Approach is robust and suitable for hostile or energy-constrained environments

Abstract

We consider large-scale wireless sensor networks with $n$ nodes, out of which k are in possession, (e.g., have sensed or collected in some other way) k information packets. In the scenarios in which network nodes are vulnerable because of, for example, limited energy or a hostile environment, it is desirable to disseminate the acquired information throughout the network so that each of the n nodes stores one (possibly coded) packet so that the original k source packets can be recovered, locally and in a computationally simple way from any k(1 + \epsilon) nodes for some small \epsilon > 0. We develop decentralized Fountain codes based algorithms to solve this problem. Unlike all previously developed schemes, our algorithms are truly distributed, that is, nodes do not know n, k or connectivity in the network, except in their own neighborhoods, and they do not maintain any routing tables.