The Test of Time Award recognizes work that continues to have a major impact on research and practice years later, foreshadows significant developments, and thus passes the "test of time."

The work by Aberer, Hauswirth and Salehi addresses wireless sensor networks. The prediction that in the future – seen from today's perspective in the recent past – the number of autonomous sensor networks worldwide will increase enormously was more than confirmed. Based on this, the researchers proposed 14 years ago to build a network-level interconnect to enable integrated data processing.  In their work, they designed a "Global Sensor Network" middleware, advancing the vision of a "Sensor Internet."

In justifying the award, the judges state that the work has proven to be highly influential and, in particular, has inspired many researchers in the field of sensor network technology, as evidenced by frequent citations.

The award ceremony took place at the 22nd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Data Management on June 18, 2021.