In-Network Outlier Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper presents a flexible, energy-efficient in-network outlier detection method for wireless sensor networks that operates with single-hop communication and adapts to dynamic data updates, demonstrated to be accurate and resource-conscious.

Contribution

It introduces a novel in-network outlier detection approach that is flexible, energy-efficient, and suitable for dynamic sensor data, with validation through simulation.

Findings

Accurate outlier detection with low communication load

Reduces bandwidth and energy consumption

Operates effectively with dynamic data updates

Abstract

To address the problem of unsupervised outlier detection in wireless sensor networks, we develop an approach that (1) is flexible with respect to the outlier definition, (2) computes the result in-network to reduce both bandwidth and energy usage,(3) only uses single hop communication thus permitting very simple node failure detection and message reliability assurance mechanisms (e.g., carrier-sense), and (4) seamlessly accommodates dynamic updates to data. We examine performance using simulation with real sensor data streams. Our results demonstrate that our approach is accurate and imposes a reasonable communication load and level of power consumption.