Developing wireless sensor networks can enable information gathering, information processing and reliable monitoring of a variety of environments for both civil and military applications. It is however necessary to agree upon a basic architecture for building sensor network applications. This paper presents a general classification of sensor network applications based on their network configurations and discusses some of their architectural requirements. We propose a generic architecture for a specific subclass of sensor applications which we define as self-configurable systems where a large number of sensors coordinate amongst themselves to achieve a large sensing task. Throughout this paper we assume a certain subset of the sensors to be immobile. This paper lists the general architectural and infra-structural components necessary for building this class of sensor applications. Given the various architectural components, we present an algorithm that self-organizes the sensors into a network in a transparent manner. Some of the basic goals of our algorithm include minimizing power utilization, localizing operations and tolerating node and link failures.
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