Using less links to improve fault-tolerant aggregation

Abstract

Data aggregation plays a basal role in the design of scalable distributed applications, allowing the determination of meaningful system-wide properties to direct the execution of the system. For instance, aggregation can be used to estimate: the size of the network to dimension of Distributed Hash Table (DHT) structures, or to set a quorum in dynamic settings; the average system load to guide local loadbalancing decisions; the total network disk space in a P2P sharing system. In the particular case of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), due to energy constraints, data collection is often only practicable if aggregation is performed.