Sensor Data Aggregation via Community Coordinating Entities

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Solution Overview

Problem

Sensor networks face challenges in ensuring the validity and health of sensor data, including preventing malfunctioning or malicious sensors from entering the network, ensuring sensors are associated with valid users, and maintaining proper functioning of sensors and equipment.

Innovation Solution

A method that involves characterizing and monitoring sensor data using a sensor information model, community sensor-coordinating entities, and property sensor-coordinating entities to validate sensor data based on user identities, transmission characteristics, and associations, ensuring only valid data from trusted sensors is routed to sensor-application-service providers.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Reliability

If sensor data is aggregated and routed through multiple coordinating entities, then data validity and network security are improved, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvesensor data validityVSAvoidnetwork architecture complexity

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The sensor network is divided into hierarchical levels with distinct coordinating entities: property-level coordinating entities that handle local sensor aggregation and validation, and community-level coordinating entities that perform broader data routing and security monitoring. This segmentation allows each entity to focus on specific validation tasks, improving overall reliability while distributing complexity across multiple manageable layers rather than requiring a single complex centralized system.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

Community sensor-coordinating entities serve as intermediaries between property-level sensors and external sensor-application-service providers. These intermediaries aggregate data from multiple property entities, validate data against community-level policies, and route verified data to appropriate services. This intermediary layer ensures data validity and security without requiring direct complex connections between all sensors and services, thereby improving reliability while managing system complexity.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

2Reliability

If comprehensive validation of sensor data is performed, then data integrity is improved, but processing time increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvedata integrityVSAvoiddata processing time

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSLoss of time

Solution Approach 1:

Property sensor-coordinating entities perform preliminary validation of sensor data locally before transmitting it to community-level entities. This includes verifying sensor authentication, checking data format compliance, and validating basic sensor behavior patterns. By performing validation actions in advance at the property level, the system ensures data integrity is established early, reducing the validation burden on community entities and minimizing overall processing time while maintaining comprehensive data integrity checks.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

3Area of stationary object

If multiple sensors are associated with users and properties, then network coverage is improved, but difficulty of validating sensor associations increases

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvenetwork coverageVSAvoidsensor association validation

Core Design Contradiction:

Area of stationary objectVSDifficulty of detecting and measuring

Solution Approach 1:

The validation of sensor associations is segmented across hierarchical levels: property-level coordinating entities first validate and establish associations between sensors, users, and properties within their local domain. They maintain association databases and verify sensor behavior patterns specific to their properties. Community-level entities then validate the overall association structure across multiple properties and users. This segmentation makes the complex validation task manageable at each level while achieving comprehensive network coverage through distributed validation efforts.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #1Segmentation

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements feedback mechanisms where property sensor-coordinating entities continuously monitor sensor behavior patterns and association consistency, providing feedback to community entities. When anomalies are detected in sensor associations or data patterns, feedback loops enable real-time validation adjustments and corrective actions. This feedback mechanism simplifies the validation process by enabling adaptive verification rather than static validation rules, making it easier to detect and measure association validity while maintaining extensive network coverage.

Inventive Principle:

Principle #23Feedback

Data Source

PatentUS8963692B2Aggregating and routing sensor data at a community sensor-coordinating entity

Publication Date: 2015.02.24 CISCO TECHNOLOGY INC

AI summary

In one embodiment, a method includes receiving sensor data from multiple sensors associated with multiple persons; for each of the sensors, identifying the person associated with the sensor; determining whether the sensor data are valid; and, for the sensor data that are valid, aggregating them based on the associations of their sensors with the persons and routing them to one or more sensor-application-service providers based on associations of the persons with the sensor-application-service providers.