Distributed passive monitoring in sensor networks

Abstract

Operation and control in wireless sensor networks (WSN) demands for new concepts and strategies such as distributed behavior control and self-organization. During the development and operation, the verification of the implemented algorithms is usually hard to discover. Monitoring techniques are required for this purpose. We present a concept for passive monitoring of WSN. Our hierarchical architecture allows a distributed monitoring and a subsequent analysis of the network traffic in the sensor networks. Basically, we employ sensor nodes with two radio interfaces. The first one is used to passively intercept radio packets in order to prevent any impact on the observed network behavior. The other one sends received information to the next level in the monitoring hierarchy towards a central analysis station