The future of security in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

This is a position paper on our views on security aspects of Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (Secure WMSNs). It is meant to serve as a brief survey. But, more importantly, it gives a perspective on how we foresee the future of this research area, its main challenges, and its future trends. We believe that this paper will spur new discussions and research ideas among the researchers from both the industry and the academic world.     

A comparison of left ventricular volumes and regurgitant fraction by Doppler echocardiography and angiography in children

In the period 1985-1991, 21,675 infants were born at the University Hospital of Copenhagen, Hvidovre Hospital, Denmark. Two hundred and twenty-four infants (10.3%) with birth weights < or = 1500 g and gestational ages < or = 32 completed weeks were transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit of the hospital. One hundred and eighty survived to at least 8 weeks of age and 170 had eye examinations. Forty-five of the 170 infants examined (26.5%) had retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) and 18 (40%) of these developed blindness or severely impaired vision, a higher incidence than reported in other studies. Significant differences were found between infants with and without ROP for: birth weight, gestational age, Apgar score at 1 min, resuscitation, ventilator treatment, duration of supplementary oxygen, severe complications in the neonatal period and sequels from the central nervous system. Statistical analysis, corrected for correlations, showed that the occurrence of ROP was related significantly to early intubation, hypotension, persistent ductus arteriosus and necrotizing enterocolitis.     

MH-TRACE: multihop time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency

In this paper, we propose multihop time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency (MH-TRACE), which is a medium access control (MAC) protocol that combines advantageous features of fully centralized and fully distributed networks for energy-efficient real-time packet broadcasting in a multihop radio network. We introduce a novel clustering algorithm that dynamically organizes the network into two-hop clusters. MH-TRACE clusters are just for coordinating channel access and minimizing interference; thus, ordinary nodes are not static members of any cluster. Time is organized into cyclic superframes, which consist of several time frames, to support reservation-based periodic channel access for real-time traffic. Each clusterhead chooses the frame with least interference based on its own measurements for the operation of its cluster. Energy dissipation for receiving unwanted or collided data packets or for waiting in idle mode is avoided through the use of information summarization packets sent prior to the data transmissions by the source nodes. Through the use of transmission schedules within each cluster, managed by the clusterheads, intracluster data collisions are completely eliminated and intercluster collisions are minimized. We investigated MH-TRACE through extensive simulations and theoretical analysis. Our results show that MH-TRACE outperforms existing distributed MAC protocols like IEEE 802.11 and sensor MAC, in terms of energy efficiency and throughput, approaching the theoretical maximum throughput and theoretical minimum energy dissipation.     

Denial-of-Service attacks and countermeasures in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

IEEE 802.11 access points deployed in shopping malls, university campuses, crowded streets, airports, and many other locations provide ubiquitous Internet access to millions of stations. However, these hot spots are vulnerable to Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks due to the broadcast nature of wireless communication. It does not require specialized hardware or particularly high level of experience to render 802.11 networks inoperable through DoS attacks. Standard off-the-shelf equipment is sufficient for a malicious station to disrupt the service between access points and stations. In this paper we present a systematic survey of DoS attacks, which exploits MAC and physical layer vulnerabilities of 802.11 networks. Available countermeasures against DoS attacks are discussed and compared. Future research directions and open issues are also discussed.     

A survey on packet size optimization for terrestrial,underwater, underground,and body area sensor networks

Packet size optimization is a critical issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for improving many performance metrics (eg, network lifetime, delay, throughput, and reliability). In WSNs, longer packets may experience higher loss rates due to harsh channel conditions. On the other hand, shorter packets may suffer from greater overhead. Hence, the optimal packet size must be chosen to enhance various performance metrics of WSNs. To this end, many approaches have been proposed to determine the optimum packet size in WSNs. In the literature, packet size optimization studies focus on a specific application or deployment environment. However, there is no comprehensive and recent survey paper that categorizes these different approaches. To address this need, in this paper, recent studies and techniques on data packet size optimization for terrestrial WSNs, underwater WSNs, wireless underground sensor networks, and body area sensor networks are reviewed to motivate the research community to further investigate this promising research area. The main objective of this paper is to provide a better understanding of different packet size optimization approaches used in different types of sensor networks and applications as well as introduce open research issues and challenges in this area.     

Efficient computation of wireless sensor network lifetime through deep neural networks

Wireless Networks - The most important quality-of-service metric for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), arguably, is the lifetime. Estimating the network lifetime under optimal operation conditions...     

Energy-efficient relaying in wireless networks

It has been shown that there is a certain distance beyond which multi-hop data transmission is more energy-efficient than direct transmission in wireless networks. In this letter we investigate the effects of noise level on the minimal energy-efficient relay distance. We find that under optimal conditions (i.e., optimal packet length and transmit power level) there is an inverse power-law relation between the noise level and the minimal energy-efficient relay distance.     

TRACE: time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency

Time reservation using adaptive control for energy efficiency (TRACE) is a time frame based media access control (MAC) protocol designed primarily for energy-efficient reliable real-time voice packet broadcasting in a peer-to-peer, single-hop infrastructureless radio network. Such networks have many application areas for various scenarios that obey a strongly connected group mobility model, such as interactive group trips, small military or security units, and mobile groups of hearing impaired people. TRACE is a centralized MAC protocol that separates contention and data transmission, providing high throughput, bounded delay, and stability under a wide range of data traffic. Furthermore, TRACE uses dynamic scheduling of data transmissions and data summarization prior to data transmission to achieve energy efficiency, which is crucial for battery operated lightweight radios. In addition, energy dissipation is evenly distributed among the nodes by switching network controllers when the energy from the current controller is lower than other nodes in the network, and reliability is achieved through automatic controller backup features. TRACE can support multiple levels of quality-of-service, and minimum bandwidth and maximum delay for voice packets are guaranteed to be within certain bounds. In this paper, we describe TRACE in detail and evaluate its performance through computer simulations and theoretical analysis.     

Neural network based instant parameter prediction for wireless sensor network optimization models

Wireless Networks - Optimal operation configuration of a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can be determined by utilizing exact mathematical programming techniques such as Mixed Integer Programming...     

Energy and Spatial Reuse Efficient Network-Wide Real-Time Data Broadcasting in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In this paper, we present NB-TRACE, which is an energy-efficient network-wide voice broadcasting architecture for mobile ad hoc networks. In the NB-TRACE architecture, the network is organized into overlapping clusters through a distributed algorithm, where the clusterheads create a nonconnected dominating set. Channel access is regulated through a distributed TDMA scheme maintained by the clusterheads. The first group of packets of a broadcast session is broadcast through flooding, where each data rebroadcast is preceded by an acknowledgment to the upstream node. Nodes that do not get an acknowledgment for a predetermined time, except the clusterheads, cease to rebroadcast, which prunes the redundant retransmissions. The connected dominating set formed through this basic algorithm is broken in time due to node mobility. The network responds to the broken links through multiple mechanisms to ensure the maintenance of the connected dominating set. We compare NB-TRACE with four network layer broadcast routing algorithms (Flooding, Gossiping, Counter-based broadcasting, and Distance-based broadcasting) and three medium access control protocols (IEEE 802.11, SMAC, and MH-TRACE) through extensive ns-2 simulations. Our results show that NB-TRACE outperforms other network/MAC layer combinations in minimizing energy dissipation and optimizing spatial reuse, while producing competitive QoS performance.