Target localization based on energy considerations in distributed sensor networks

Wireless distributed sensor networks are important for a number of strategic applications such as coordinated target detection, surveillance, and localization. Energy is a critical resource in wireless sensor networks and system lifetime needs to be prolonged through the use of energy-conscious sensing strategies during system operation. We propose an energy-aware target detection and localization strategy for cluster-based wireless sensor networks. The proposed method is based on an a posteriori algorithm with a two-step communication protocol between the cluster head and the sensors within the cluster. Based on a limited amount of data received from the sensor nodes, the cluster head executes a localization procedure to determine the subset of sensors that must be queried for detailed target information. This approach reduces both energy consumption and communication bandwidth requirements, and prolongs the lifetime of the wireless sensor network. Simulation results show that a large amount of energy is saved during target localization using this strategy.     

Novel service protocol for supporting remote and mobile users in wireless sensor networks with multiple static sinks

A wireless sensor network typically consists of users, a sink, and a number of sensor nodes. The users may be remotely connected to a wireless sensor network and via legacy networks such as Internet or Satellite the remote users obtain data collected by the sink that is statically located at a border of the wireless sensor network. However, in practical sensor network applications, there might be two types of users: the traditional remote users and mobile users such as firefighters and soldiers. The mobile users may move around sensor fields and they communicate with the static sink only via the wireless sensor networks in order to obtain data like location information of victims in disaster areas. For supporting the mobile users, existing studies consider temporary structures. However, the temporary structures are constructed per each mobile user or each source nodes so that it causes large energy consumption of sensor nodes. Moreover, since some of them establish the source-based structure, sinks in them cannot gather collective information like mean temperature and object detection. In this paper, to effectively support both the remote users and the mobile users, we propose a novel service protocol relying on the typical wireless sensor network. In the protocol, multiple static sinks connect with legacy networks and divide a sensor field into the number of the multiple sinks. Through sharing queries and data via the legacy networks, the multiple static sinks provide high throughput through distributed data gathering and low latency through short-hops data delivery. Multiple static sinks deliver the aggregated data to the remote users via the legacy networks. In case of the mobile users, when a mobile user moves around, it receives the aggregated data from the nearest static sink. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol is more efficient in terms of energy consumption, data delivery ratio, and delay than the existing protocols.     

Relocation routing for energy balancing in mobile sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have been widely investigated in the past decades because of its applicability in various extreme environments. As sensors use battery, most works on WSNs focus on energy efficiency issues (e.g., local energy balancing problems) in statically deployed WSNs. Few works have paid attention to the global energy balancing problem for the scenario that mobile sensor nodes can move freely. In this paper, we propose a new routing protocol called global energy balancing routing protocol (GEBRP) based on an active network framework and node relocation in mobile sensor networks. This protocol achieves global energy efficiency by repairing coverage holes and replacing invalid nodes dynamically. Simulation and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed GEBRP achieves superior performance over the existing scheme. In addition, we analyze the delay performance of GEBRP and study how the delay performance is affected by various system parameters.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy-efficient target detection in sensor networks using line proxies

One of the fundamental and important operations in sensor networks is sink–source matching, i.e. target detection. Target detection is about how a sink finds the location of source nodes observing the event of interest (i.e. target activity). This operation is very important in many sensor network applications such as military battlefield and environment habitats. The mobility of both targets and sinks brings significant challenge to target detection in sensor networks. Most existing approaches are either energy inefficient or lack of fault tolerance in the environment of mobile targets and mobile sinks. Motivated by these, we propose an energy-efficient line proxy target detection (LPTD) approach in this paper. The basic idea of LPTD is to use designated line proxies as rendezvous points (or agents) to coordinate mobile sinks and mobile targets. Instead of having rendezvous nodes for each target type as used by most existing approaches, we adopt the temporal-based hash function to determine the line in the given time. Then the lines are alternated over time in the entire sensor network. This simple temporal-based line rotation idea allows all sensor nodes in the network to serve as rendezvous points and achieves overall load balancing. Furthermore, instead of network-wide flooding, interests from sinks will be flooded only to designated line proxies within limited area. The interest flooding can further decrease if the interest has geographical constraints. We have conducted extensive analysis and simulations to evaluate the performance of our proposed approach. Our results show that the proposed approach can significantly reduce overall energy consumption and target detection delay. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

无线移动传感器网络自适应体系结构的设计

随着无线网络技术的日益成熟及其对小型、微型移动设备的支持,无线移动传感器网络已经逐渐成为一个研究的热点。主要讨论了为无线移动传感器网络设计的一个自适应的体系结构。在该体系结构中,使用了一个区域和核心路由节点相结合的多层结构的方法来增加无线移动网络的信息传输能力、可扩充性和可靠性,并降低网络的能耗,这样就可以适应无线移动网络的高度动态性和移动性。     

Cooperative Caching in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

The recent advances in miniaturization and the creation of low-power circuits, combined with small-sized batteries have made the development of wireless sensor networks a working reality. Lately, the production of cheap complementary metal-oxide semiconductor cameras and microphones, which are able to capture rich multimedia content, gave birth to what is called Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs). WMSNs will boost the capabilities of current wireless sensor networks, and will fuel several novel applications, like multimedia surveillance sensor networks. WMSNs introduce several new research challenges, mainly related to mechanisms to deliver application-level Quality-of-Service (e.g., latency minimization). To address this goal in an environment with extreme resource constraints, with variable channel capacity and with requirements for multimedia in-network processing, the caching of multimedia data, exploiting the cooperation among sensor nodes is vital. This article presents a cooperative caching solution particularly suitable for WMSNs. The proposed caching solution exploits sensor nodes which reside in “positions” of the network that allow them to forward packets or communicate decisions within short latency. These so-called “mediator” nodes are selected dynamically, so as to avoid the creation of hot-spots in the communication and the depletion of their energy. The mediators are not more powerful than the rest of the nodes, but they have some special role in implementing the cooperation among the sensors. The proposed cooperative caching protocol includes components for locating cached data as well as for implementing data purging out of the sensor caches. The proposed solution is evaluated extensively in an advanced simulation environment, and it is compared to the state-of-the-art cooperative caching algorithm for mobile ad hoc networks. The results confirm that the proposed caching mechanism prevails over its competitor.     

无线移动传感器网络自适应体系结构的设计

随着无线网络技术的日益成熟及其对小型、微型移动设备的支持，无线移动传感器网络已经逐渐成为一个研究的热点。主要讨论了为无线移动传感器网络设计的一个自适应的体系结构。在该体系结构中，使用了一个区域和核心路由节点相结合的多层结构的方法来增加无线移动网络的信息传输能力、可扩充性和可靠性，并降低网络的能耗，这样就可以适应无线移动网络的高度动态性和移动性。     

Extending the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks Through Mobile Relays

We investigate the benefits of a heterogeneous architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) composed of a few resource rich mobile relay nodes and a large number of simple static nodes. The mobile relays have more energy than the static sensors. They can dynamically move around the network and help relieve sensors that are heavily burdened by high network traffic, thus extending the latter's lifetime. We first study the performance of a large dense network with one mobile relay and show that network lifetime improves over that of a purely static network by up to a factor of four. Also, the mobile relay needs to stay only within a two-hop radius of the sink. We then construct a joint mobility and routing algorithm which can yield a network lifetime close to the upper bound. The advantage of this algorithm is that it only requires a limited number of nodes in the network to be aware of the location of the mobile relay. Our simulation results show that one mobile relay can at least double the network lifetime in a randomly deployed WSN. By comparing the mobile relay approach with various static energy-provisioning methods, we demonstrate the importance of node mobility for resource provisioning in a WSN.      

Detecting and connecting disjoint sub-networks in wireless sensor and actor networks

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) can be considered as a combination of a sensor network and an actor network in which powerful and mobile actor nodes can perform application specific actions based on the received data from the sensors. As most of these actions are performed collaboratively among the actors, inter-actor connectivity is one of the desirable features of WSANs. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed algorithm for establishing a connected inter-actor network topology. Considering initially disjoint sets of actors, our algorithm first initiates a search process by using the underlying sensor network in order to detect the possible sub-networks of actors in the region. After these sub-networks are detected, our algorithm pursues a coordinated actor movement in order to connect the sub-networks and thus achieve inter-actor connectivity for all the actors. This coordinated movement approach exploits the minimum connected dominating set of each sub-network when picking the appropriate actor to move so that the connectivity of each sub-network is not violated. In addition, the approach strives to minimize the total travel distance of actors and the messaging cost on both sensors and actors in order to extend the lifetime of WSAN. We analytically study the performance of our algorithm. Extensive simulation experiments validate the analytical results and confirm the effectiveness of our approach.     

A Delay-Aware Wireless Sensor Network Routing Protocol for Industrial Applications

With the rapid development of information communication technologies, industrial manufacturing environments and requirements have changed considerably. Since wireless sensor networks have become more and more popular, our production chains have improved with respect to efficiency, flexibility and security. On the other hand, building a secure, robust and fast network is an essential issue for enterprises. In the past, few experts focused on this issue of industrial applications and most of solutions proposed are not suitable for industrial environments. In this paper, we propose a real-time routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor nodes in industrial environments, which offers superior quality of service in terms of delay time. We use geographic routing and information contained in the nodes routing table to extract location information. Then we calculate the node which is nearest to the target node to reduce hop counts and achieve fast data package transfers. It optimizes the packets forwarding hops, which in turn reduces the delay time effectively. We used OPNET to analyze our protocol and results indicate that this algorithm is useful and suitable for wireless sensor networks     

Range-Free Mobile Sensor Localization and a Novel Obstacle Detection Technique

Mobile sensor localization is a challenging problem in wireless sensor networks. Due to mobility, it is difficult to find exact position of the sensors at any time instance. The aim of localization is to minimize positioning errors of the mobile sensors. In this paper we propose two range-free distributed localization algorithms for mobile sensors with static anchors. Both the algorithms depend on selection of beacon points. First we assume that mobile sensors move straight during localization which helps us to provide an upper bound on localization error. Certain applications may not allow sensors to move in a straight line. Obstacles may also obstruct path of sensors. Moreover beacon point selection becomes difficult in presence of obstacles. To address these issues, we propose another localization algorithm with an obstacle detection technique which selects correct beacon points for localization in presence of obstacles. Simulation results show improvements in performance over existing algorithms.     

Cost Modelling and Studies with Different Deployment Strategies for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network Over Flat and Elevated Terrains

Wireless multimedia sensor networks (WMSNs) is widely used for surveillance application. These multimedia (audio and video) nodes are distributed according to different deployment strategies in a multi-tier heterogeneous architecture environment. In this paper we have modelled the deployment cost of WMSN considering the sensor type (audio or video), sensor configuration such as remaining energy of battery, deployment point, and terrain characteristics for surveillance applications. Using our proposed cost models we have studied the effects of different deployment strategies of WMSN over flat and elevated terrains. Our cost models helps in minimizing the cost of deployment while maintaining Quality-of-Service i.e., the coverage and connectivity of the audio and video sensors separately. We have formulated an integer linear program and proposed a heuristic solution to minimize the placement costs subject to network coverage requirements using our first cost model. Our second cost model is used to propose a scheme that will ensure connectivity of the network. We have done simulations with three network deployment strategies, namely deterministic, random and hybrid and show that the hybrid deployment of sensor nodes yields a balance of performance and cost as compared to the other two. Our study provides guidelines for the network architect to select a particular deployment strategy under performance and cost requirements.     

VLC Turbulence Effects on the Performance of the Fish School Behavior Modeling Mobile Diffusion Adaptive Networks in Underwater Environments

Implementation of different telecommunication systems based on wireless optical technologies requires careful awareness of the link conditions in order to predict the performance of each system and its expectations. Wireless optical communication channels, like telecommunication channels, have a fading phenomenon, which is called optical turbulence. A particular class of adaptive networks has the ability to move nodes and can move and converge to moving or static targets. The applications of these networks include dynamic and regional observation and pursuit of underwater military objects. The best type of communication technologies proposed for such networks is Visible Light Communication, or VLC, through which sensors, like the fish schools, with the optical communication between each other, move toward the targets. Investigating the impact of channel conditions and optical noise on these networks are other innovations of this research. In this paper, we model the behavior of a fish school in underwater VLC conditions using a mobile diffusion network. Our simulation results show the effects of water properties on the convergence of the mobile network nodes to a certain target. It is shown that as the water temperature, salinity level and the distance between the nodes increase, the convergence error rises and the nodes become departed from the target position.

     

The Energy-Aware Operational Time of Wireless Ad-Hoc Sensor Networks

Sensor networks are deployed in numerous military and civil applications, such as remote target detection, weather monitoring, weather forecast, natural resource exploration and disaster management. Despite having many potential applications, wireless sensor networks still face a number of challenges due to their particular characteristics that other wireless networks, like cellular networks or mobile ad hoc networks do not have. The most difficult challenge of the design of wireless sensor networks is the limited energy resource of the battery of the sensors. This limited resource restricts the operational time that wireless sensor networks can function in their applications. Routing protocols play a major part in the energy efficiency of wireless sensor networks because data communication dissipates most of the energy resource of the networks. This paper studies the importance of considering neighboring nodes in the energy efficiency routing problem. After showing that the routing problem that considers the remaining energy of all sensor nodes is NP-complete, heuristics are proposed for the problem. Simulation results show that the routing algorithm that considers the remaining energy of all sensor nodes improves the system lifetime significantly compared to that of minimum transmission energy algorithms. Also, the energy dissipation of neighboring nodes accounts for a considerable amount of the total energy dissipation. Therefore, a method that reduces the energy dissipation by notifying the neighboring nodes to turn off their radio when not necessary is proposed. By reducing the unnecessary energy dissipation of the neighbors, the lifetime is increased significantly.     

Rendezvous Planning in Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Elements

Recent research shows that significant energy saving can be achieved in wireless sensor networks by using mobile elements (MEs) capable of carrying data mechanically. However, the low movement speed of MEs hinders their use in data-intensive sensing applications with temporal constraints. To address this issue, we propose a rendezvous-based approach in which a subset of nodes serve as the rendezvous points (RPs) that buffer data originated from sources and transfer to MEs when they arrive. RPs enable MEs to collect a large volume of data at a time without traveling long distances, which can achieve a desirable balance between network energy saving and data collection delay. We develop two rendezvous planning algorithms, RP-CP and RP-UG. RP-CP finds the optimal RPs when MEs move along the data routing tree while RP-UG greedily chooses the RPs with maximum energy saving to travel distance ratios. We design the Rendezvous-based Data Collection protocol that facilitates reliable data transfers from RPs to MEs in presence of significant unexpected delays in ME movement and network communication. Our approach is validated through extensive simulations.     

A Tabu Search Algorithm for Cluster Building in Wireless Sensor Networks

The main challenge in wireless sensor network deployment pertains to optimizing energy consumption when collecting data from sensor nodes. This paper proposes a new centralized clustering method for a data collection mechanism in wireless sensor networks, which is based on network energy maps and Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. The clustering problem is modeled as a hypergraph partitioning and its resolution is based on a tabu search heuristic. Our approach defines moves using largest size cliques in a feasibility cluster graph. Compared to other methods (CPLEX-based method, distributed method, simulated annealing-based method), the results show that our tabu search-based approach returns high-quality solutions in terms of cluster cost and execution time. As a result, this approach is suitable for handling network extensibility in a satisfactory manner.     

Minimum spanning tree–based delay‐aware mobile sink traversal in wireless sensor networks

Energy efficient data collection in a delay‐bound application is a challenging issue for mobile sink–based wireless sensor networks. Many researchers have proposed the concept of rendezvous points (RPs) to design the path for the mobile sink. Rendezvous points are the locations in the network where the mobile sink halts and collects data from the nearby sensor nodes. However, the selection of RPs for the design of path has a significant impact on timely data collection from the network. In this paper, we propose an efficient algorithm for selection of the RPs for efficient design of mobile sink trajectory in delay‐bound applications of wireless sensor networks. The algorithm is based on a virtual path and minimum spanning tree and shown to maximize network lifetime. We perform extensive simulations on the proposed algorithm and compare results with the existing algorithms to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm of various performance metrics.     

无线传感器网络多业务仿真平台的实现方案

在无线传感器网络中,由于传感器节点的能源十分有限,节能是设计的首要因素。然而,无线传感器网络的多业务在现实生活应用中对QoS(服务质量)都有不同的需求,这就使得WSN网络的QoS研究成为了专家学者们的主要研究方向。在WSN网络拓扑结构和业务类型的研究基础上,使用网络模拟器(Network Simulator Version 2,NS2)来搭建基于多业务共存的星型以及对等结构两种WSN网络仿真平台,建立多种业务流量模型,实现以无线传感器网络协议、流量模型、拓扑为基础的功能模块化设计;并对无线传感器网络关键性能进行了仿真模拟,实现延时、吞吐量、能耗等关键性能的分析。     

Nature inspired discrete firefly algorithm for optimal mobile data gathering in wireless sensor networks

Nowadays wireless sensor networks enhance the life of human beings by helping them through several applications like precision agriculture, health monitoring, landslide detection, pollution control, etc. The built-in sensors on a sensor node are used to measure the various events like temperature, vibration, gas emission, etc., in the remotely deployed unmanned environment. The limited energy constraint of the sensor node causes a huge impact on the lifetime of the deployed network. The data transmitted by each sensor node cause significant energy consumption and it has to be efficiently used to improve the lifetime of the network. The energy consumption can be reduced significantly by incorporating mobility on a sink node. Thus the mobile data gathering can result in reduced energy consumption among all sensor nodes while transmitting their data. A special mobile sink node named as the mobile data transporter (MDT) is introduced in this paper to collect the information from the sensor nodes by visiting each of them and finally it sends them to the base station. The Data collection by the MDT is formulated as a discrete optimization problem which is termed as a data gathering tour problem. To reduce the distance traveled by the MDT during its tour, a nature-inspired heuristic discrete firefly algorithm is proposed in this paper to optimally collect the data from the sensor nodes. The proposed algorithm computes an optimal order to visit the sensor nodes by the MDT to collect their data with minimal travel distance. The proposed algorithm is compared with tree-based data collection approaches and ant colony optimization approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperform other approaches minimizing the tour length under different scenarios.     

移动无线传感网能量时延约束的自适应路由及性能评估

 针对间歇性连通的移动无线传感网提出一种能量时延约束的自适应路由协议(EDCA),EDCA由初始化阶段、转发决策阶段、转发阶段和等待阶段组成,传感器节点根据目标时延实时判断是否转发副本,并选择剩余能量多的节点进行副本转发.EDCA对平均时延和网络负载具有控制力,对网络环境变化具有自适应能力,能够有效延长网络生命周期.