Temporal Paths in Real-World Sensor Networks

Abstract

Sensor networks are used in an increasing number and variety of application areas, like traffic control or river monitoring. Sensors in these networks measure parameters of interest defined by domain experts and send these measurements to a central location for storage, viewing and analysis. Temporal graph data models, whose nodes contain time-series data reported by the sensors, have been proposed to model and analyze these networks in order to take informed and timely decisions on their operation. Temporal paths are first-class citizens in this model and some classes of them have been identified in the literature. Queries aimed at finding these paths are denoted as (temporal) path queries. In spite of these efforts, many interesting problems remain open and, in this work, we aim at answering some of them. More concretely, we characterize the classes of temporal paths that can be defined in a sensor network in terms of the well-known Allen’s temporal algebra. We also show that, out of the 8192 possible interval relations in this algebra, only 11 satisfy two desirable properties that we define: transitivity and robustness. We show how these properties and the paths that satisfy them are relevant in practice by means of a real-world use case consisting of an analysis of salinity that appears close to the Scheldt river in Flanders, Belgium, during high tides occurring in the North Sea.