Yan H Liu

US Patent:

7636038, Dec 22, 2009

Filed:

Feb 5, 2007

Appl. No.:

11/671200

Inventors:

Shimon Y. Nof - Lafayette IN, US
Yan Liu - Fairborn OH, US
Wootae Jeong - West Lafayette IN, US

Assignee:

Purdue Research Foundation - West Lafayette IN

International Classification:

G08B 29/00

US Classification:

340506, 34053922, 340517, 340507

Abstract:

A fault-tolerant timeout protocol for distributed sensor arrays and networks in which each sensor has a plurality of backup nodes, each of which is operable to send priority information which includes the product of the time needed for the backup node to transmit sensor information to a base station and the number of tasks offered to the backup node. In another embodiment, the base station stores the two values and calculates their product. In both cases, the lowest resulting value is used by the base station to select the backup node, which then sends backup sensor information. Another aspect of the present invention is a fault-tolerant sensor integration algorithm. The algorithm creates an abstract sensor defined as an interval having values above and below the reading of an associated physical sensor, and finds a range of values common to more than half of the abstract sensors. The algorithm obtains an output value based on the common range of values, and identifies the correct sensors, possibly faulty sensors, and faulty sensors by identifying the abstract sensors that include, respectively, (a) all of the common range, (b) part of the common range, and (c) none of the common range. A further aspect of the invention is a multi-hop information forwarding method for a wireless network.