Preliminaries for topological change detection in sensor networks

Abstract. Topological changes of dynamic phenomena, such as region merging/splitting and hole formation/elimination, describe significant events in their evolution. Information about such salient changes is use-ful in many applications. The research reported in this paper provides theoretical foundations for topological detection in sensor networks. A local tree model is proposed in the spatial domain, based on which a set of types of topological changes is specified. We also present a sensor net-work framework which captures the necessary information required by the tree model. Both the local tree model and the sensor network frame-work form the foundations for detection approaches that allow sensor networks to report topological changes. 1 Introduction an