Applying the Chinese remainder theorem to data aggregation in wireless sensor networks

In WSNs low complexity techniques for reducingthe amount of bits flowing throughout the network are neededto decrease the bandwidth waste and increase the networklifetime. To this purpose, spatial correlation due to the highdensity of the deployed devices can be exploited. In this paperwe propose a novel in-network aggregation technique based onthe Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), which exploits the wellknown advantages of the source coding while using a distributedapproach with no need of coordination among network nodes.Also, an appropriate network coding mechanism based on theCRT is combined to source coding to enable lossless transmissionfrom the sources to the sink.