Lightweight routing with dynamic interests in wireless sensor and actor networks

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) have been increasingly popular for environmental monitoring applications in the last decade. While the deployment of sensor nodes enables a fine granularity of data collection, resource-rich actor nodes provide further evaluation of the information and reaction. Quality of service (QoS) and routing solutions for WSANs are challenging compared to traditional networks because of the limited node resources. WSANs also have different QoS requirements than wireless sensor networks (WSNs) since actors and sensor nodes have distinct resource constraints.In this paper, we present, LRP-QS, a lightweight routing protocol with dynamic interests and QoS support for WSANs. LRP-QS provides QoS by differentiating the rates among different types of interests with dynamic packet tagging at sensor nodes and per flow management at actor nodes. The interests, which define the types of events to observe, are distributed in the network. The weights of the interests are determined dynamically by using a nonsensitive ranking algorithm depending on the variation in the observed values of data collected in response to interests. Our simulation studies show that the proposed protocol provides a higher packet delivery ratio and a lower memory consumption than the existing state of the art protocols.     

Optimal base station selection for anycast routing in wireless sensor networks

Energy constraints have a significant impact on the design and operation of wireless sensor networks. This paper investigates the base station (BS) selection (or anycast) problem in wireless sensor networks. A wireless sensor network having multiple BSs (data sink nodes) is considered. Each source node must send all its locally generated data to only one of the BSs. To maximize network lifetime, it is essential to optimally match each source node to a particular BS and find an optimal routing solution. A polynomial time heuristic is proposed for optimal BS selection and anycast via a sequential fixing procedure. Through extensive simulation results, it is shown that this algorithm has excellent performance behavior and provides a near-optimal solution.     

Achieving maximum flow in interference-aware wireless sensor networks with smart antennas

Directional antenna offers various benefits for wireless sensor networks, such as increased spatial reuse ratio and reduced energy consumption. In this paper, we formulate the maximum flow problem as an optimization problem in interference-limited wireless sensor networks with switched beam directional antennas. The optimization problem is solvable in the presence of an omniscient controller, but it is NP-hard. Therefore, we seek a distributed algorithm to achieve the maximum flow through jointly routing and scheduling. The maximum flow between given source destination pair is determined forwardly hop by hop and is verified by the proposed feasible condition at downstream nodes. This method works for both single-beam antenna and multi-beam antenna with some variation in the feasibility condition.     

Intelligent actor mobility in wireless sensor and actor networks

In wireless sensor and actor network research, the commonly used mobility models for a mobile actor are random walk model, random waypoint mobility model, or variants thereof. For a fully connected network, the choice of mobility model for the actor is not critical because, there is at least one assured path from the sensor nodes to the actor node. But, for a sparsely connected network where information cannot propagate beyond a cluster, random movement of the actor may not be the best choice to maximize event detection and subsequent action. This paper presents static and dynamic intelligent mobility models that are based on the inherent clusters’ information of a sparsely connected network. Simulation results validate the idea behind the intelligent mobility models and provide insights into the applicability of these mobility models in different application scenarios.     

Joint channel assignment and routing in multiradio multichannel wireless mesh networks with directional antennas

The aggregate capacity of a wireless mesh network (WMN) is severely affected by interflow interference. In this paper, we propose a network architecture that incorporates directional antennas with multiple orthogonal channels to effectively enhance the performance of WMNs. First, a sectored connectivity graph is introduced to model multiradio multichannel WMNs with directional antennas. Next we formulate the topology design, directional interface assignment, channel allocation, and routing mathematically as a mixed integer linear programming problem. This problem is solved using an iterated local search algorithm to obtain optimized network resource allocation. Simulation results indicate that the proposed architecture can achieve higher packet delivery ratio while providing better network fairness. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A range-adaptive directional MAC protocol for wireless ad hoc networks with smart antennas

Using smart antennas in wireless ad hoc networks can offer tremendous potential for improving the network performance. This paper proposes a range-adaptive MAC protocol, called Ra-MAC, for wireless ad hoc networks using smart antennas. In contrast to the previous MAC protocols with only single-fold directional transmission range, we propose to use multi-fold transmission ranges, i.e., LD (Low-distance), MD (Mid-distance) and HD (High-distance), to arrange efficient communications between the senders and receivers. The transmission range is selected dynamically according to the distance between the communicating node-pair. Building on the multiple transmission ranges, we extend directional network allocation vector (DNAV) to range-based DNAV (R-DNAV) to make full use of wireless channels. Moreover, in order to deal with the basic problems (i.e., hidden terminals, deafness and capture) within smart antenna-based wireless networks, we further equip some optimizations such as half-sweeping start of dialog (SOD), extended directional virtual carrier sensing (DVCS) and so on to Ra-MAC, and then detailedly discuss how these optimizations contribute to address the problems. Simulation results indicate that Ra-MAC outperforms the existing directional MAC protocols and 802.11 DCF. Finally, we also make a brief qualitative comparison between all these protocols.     

基于智能天线的定向传播路由协议在WSAN中的应用

在无线传感器及执行器网络(WSAN)中,节点的协作需要通过路由协议进行大量的信息转发。传统使用全方向天线的节点存在能耗高、传输延迟高、数据包传递率低的问题。文中基于智能天线,将定向传播路由协议(ADA)应用于WSAN网络中,通过定向的转发信息减小节点能耗,降低传输延迟,提高数据包传递率。最后,通过Matlab对ADA协议和其他使用全方向天线的节点通信协议的性能进行仿真对比。实验结果表明,在节点能耗、数据包传送延迟和数据包传递率方面,基于智能天线的ADA协议优于其他使用全方向天线的节点通信协议。     

Performance evaluation of single and multi-channel actor to actor communication for wireless sensor actor networks

The paper discusses two distributed actor to actor communication schemes (a single channel one and a multi-channel one) for wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs). The performance of these two schemes is evaluated through analysis and simulation. The simulation results show that the whole analysis is fairly accurate. It is further proven that the multi-channel scheme has better performance than the single channel one. The key feature of the multi-channel scheme is the separation of the single hop from the multi-hop traffic.     

An overview of using directional antennas in wireless networks

Compared with omni‐directional antennas, directional antennas have many merits, such as lower interference, better spatial reuse, longer transmission range, and improved network capacity. Directional antennas enable numerous emerging outdoor and indoor applications, which have been addressed in many recent studies. Despite the advances in wireless networks with directional antennas (DAWNs), there are many research challenges in all layers of DAWNs. This paper presents a detailed study on recent advances and open research issues on DAWNs. Firstly, we briefly introduce the classification of directional antennas, antenna radiation patterns, antenna modes, and the challenges in the physical layer of DAWNs. We then present research issues on the medium access control (MAC) layer, followed by the current solutions as well as open research problems on the MAC layer of DAWNs. In addition, we also discuss the research issues on the routing layer and the transport layer. Moreover, other research challenges on the performance evaluation of DAWNs and a brief introduction of indoor DAWNs are given in this paper as well. In conclusion, we summarize the current research issues on DAWNs as well as prospects in the future. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fast neighbor positioning and medium access in wireless networks with directional antennas

We study the problem of fast neighbor positioning and medium access in wireless networks with directional antennas. In this problem, the cross-layer dimension inherently comes into stage through the impact of PHY-layer antenna directionality on medium access. Fast neighbor positioning reduces the network initialization overhead and leaves more time for executing other protocols. Fast medium access leads to larger volume of transmitted data per unit of time. The two problems are studied in a unified manner in a system with one Access Point (AP) and multiple users around it. The AP sequentially scans the space by forming directional beams and applies contention-free or contention-based user polling within each beam. In the former method, polling messages are addressed to a specific user. In the latter, users in a beam contend to have their message received by the AP.We explore the impact of the contention resolution protocol and the directional beam width on user positioning and medium access delay. A large beam width incurs large expected delay for contention resolution due to the larger expected amount of contention in the beam, but on the other hand, it implies that fewer beams, and hence smaller delay is needed to scan the entire space. We obtain analytic expressions for the total average user positioning and the medium access delay, and we present an optimization method for minimizing it by appropriately selecting the beam width and the persistence probability of the collision resolution protocol. Our method uses accumulated knowledge from previous scans to estimate the anticipated amount of contention in upcoming scans and to adjust the beam width and persistence probability accordingly. Our numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of our techniques in terms of fast neighbor positioning.     

Maximum lifetime routing in wireless sensor networks

A routing problem in static wireless ad hoc networks is considered as it arises in a rapidly deployed, sensor based, monitoring system known as the wireless sensor network. Information obtained by the monitoring nodes needs to be routed to a set of designated gateway nodes. In these networks, every node is capable of sensing, data processing, and communication, and operates on its limited amount of battery energy consumed mostly in transmission and reception at its radio transceiver. If we assume that the transmitter power level can be adjusted to use the minimum energy required to reach the intended next hop receiver then the energy consumption rate per unit information transmission depends on the choice of the next hop node, i.e., the routing decision. We formulate the routing problem as a linear programming problem, where the objective is to maximize the network lifetime, which is equivalent to the time until the network partition due to battery outage. Two different models are considered for the information-generation processes. One assumes constant rates and the other assumes an arbitrary process. A shortest cost path routing algorithm is proposed which uses link costs that reflect both the communication energy consumption rates and the residual energy levels at the two end nodes. The algorithm is amenable to distributed implementation. Simulation results with both information-generation process models show that the proposed algorithm can achieve network lifetime that is very close to the optimal network lifetime obtained by solving the linear programming problem.     

无线传感器网络中基于协同的机会路由

提出了一种适用于无线传感器网络的基于协同的机会路由协议,协议在结合区域路由、会聚机制和睡眠机制的基础上,使用跨层的方法对无线传感器网络的路由协议进行改进,以增强网络连接随机变化条件下路由协议的顽健性,并以能量有效的方式提高了数据的转发速度.仿真结果表明,在不同节点密度条件下,基于协同的机会路由在数据转发能效方面比非协同的机会路由有很大的提高.     

Distributed power-source-aware routing in wireless sensor networks

Wireless Networks - Although many applications use battery-powered sensor nodes, in some applications battery- and mains-powered nodes coexist. In this paper, we present a distributed algorithm...     

采用方向性天线的ad hoc网络路由协议研究

为了降低方向性天线扫描路由发现的开销和代价,有效利用方向性天线的高空间复用度和高传输能力,提出一种采用方向性天线的ad hoc网络位置信息辅助的按需距离矢量路由协议DLAODV,协议以按需方式获取网络节点的位置信息,结合泛洪、受限泛洪、路由压缩、位置信息修正的贪婪转发策略以及分区桥接策略,充分利用方向性天线优势,有效提高路由发现效率,路由区分维护策略有效降低了路由维护开销.仿真结果显示,DLAODV能够使得网络获得高吞吐率、低时延和开销性能,相比采用全向天线的AODV协议性能获得了明显提升.     

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.     

Exact approach to reliability of wireless mesh networks with directional antennas

The paper is devoted to modeling and optimization of reliable wireless mesh networks that employ directional antennas. We introduce two mixed-integer programming formulations that allow to simultaneously characterize routing patterns and transmission schedules. The first model allows for maximizing the minimal flow in a network. The second model involves reliability constraints and aims at minimizing the number of used directional antennas. In both cases locations of mesh routers are known. However, the number of installed radio interfaces and their directions are subject to optimization. We discuss a way of solving a cost minimization problem based on the introduced characterization, and present an extensive numerical study that illustrates the efficiency of the solution algorithm. We also provide an algorithm capable of verifying feasibility of obtained solutions. Moreover, in rare cases of failed verification, the algorithm provides additional constraints that should be added to the problem.     

Exploiting smart antennas in wireless mesh networks using contention access

Smart antennas can increase the capacity of mesh networks and reduce the susceptibility of individual nodes to interception and jamming, but creating the conditions that allow them to be effective is difficult. In this article we provide a broad review of antenna technologies and identify their capabilities and limitations. We review mechanisms used by medium access control schemes to arbitrate access. These reviews let us identify a small set of conditions that are necessary for smart antenna exploitation. We then review the most common MAC approaches, carrier sense multiple access, slotted aloha, and time-division multiple access, and evaluate their suitability for exploiting smart antennas. We demonstrate that they are not capable of creating the complete set of antenna exploitation conditions while retaining a contention nature. We follow with a discussion of the synchronous collision resolution (SCR) MAC scheme and describe how it creates all the exploitation conditions. We conclude that SCR provides the best support for smart antenna exploitation with the added benefits that there is no requirement for all nodes to be equipped with the same antenna technologies and that smart antennas can be combined with channelization technologies to provide even higher capacities.     

Provisioning link layer proportional service differentiation in wireless networks with smart antennas

In this paper, we present a collision free MAC protocol for wireless networks with smart antennas that provides proportional service differentiation to various classes of traffic based on their respective bandwidth demand. The proposed protocol works for diverse physical parameters such as number of interfaces at each node, number of communication frequencies, and antenna beamwidth. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first work that provides link layer differentiated services for wireless networks with smart antennas and explores the influence of the physical parameters and network topology on the performance of the MAC layer. Ashish Deopura received his B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, India, in 2003, and he received his M.S. degree in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in 2005. He currently works as a Modeling Engineer for OPNET Technologies located in Bethesda, MD Professor Aura Ganz is the director of the Multimedia Networking Laboratory at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has authored more than 170 journal and conference papers in the areas of multimedia wireless networks, ubiquitous computing, telemedicine, and security. She is a co-author of the book: “Multimedia Wireless Networks”, Prentice Hall, 2003. Some of her recent assignments include: general co-chair of the IEEE UWBNETS workshop, general co-chair of the IEEE BROADMED workshop, general co-chair of the Massachusetts 3rd Annual R&D Conference, keynote speaker at the NSF sponsored workshop in Mobile Computing, and invited speaker at Personal and Local Wireless Network Solutions conference, and Motorola’s Wireless Communications Futures Forum, Wireless Local Area Networks Conference. She has a PhD, MSc and BSc in Computer Science from the Technion in Israel. More details can be found at: dvd1.ecs.umass.edu/wireless.     

Enhanced tree routing for wireless sensor networks

Tree routing (TR) is a low-overhead routing protocol designated for simple, low-cost and low-power wireless sensor networks. It avoids flooding the network with path search and update messages in order to conserve bandwidth and energy by using only parent–child links for packet forwarding. The major drawback of TR is the increased hop-counts as compared with more sophisticated path search protocols. We propose an enhanced tree routing (ETR) strategy for sensor networks which have structured node address assignment schemes. In addition to the parent–child links, ETR also uses links to other one-hop neighbours if it is decided that this will lead to a shorter path. It is shown that such a decision can be made with minimum storage and computing cost by utilizing the address structure. Detailed algorithms for applying ETR to ZigBee networks are also presented. Simulation results reveal that ETR not only outperforms TR in terms of hop-counts, but also is more energy-efficient than TR.     

Adaptive data aggregation with probabilistic routing in wireless sensor networks

Periodical extraction of raw sensor readings is one of the most representative and comprehensive applications in Wireless sensor networks. In order to reduce the data redundancy and the communication load, in-network data aggregation is usually applied to merge the packets during the routing process. Aggregation protocols with deterministic routing pre-construct the stationary structure to perform data aggregation. However, the overhead of construction and maintenance always outweighs the benefits of data aggregation under dynamic scenarios. This paper proposes an Adaptive Data Aggregation protocol with Probabilistic Routing for the periodical data collection events. The main idea is to encourage the nodes to use an optimal routing structure for data aggregation with certain probability. The optimal routing structure is defined as a Multi-Objective Steiner Tree, which can be explored and exploited by the routing scheme based on the Ant Colony Optimization and Genetic Algorithm hybrid approach. The probabilistic routing decision ensures the adaptability for some topology transformations. Moreover, by using the prediction model based on the sliding window for future arriving packets, the adaptive timing policy can reduce the transmission delay and can enhance the aggregation probability. Therefore, the packet transmission converges from both spatial and temporal aspects for the data aggregation. Finally, the theoretical analysis and the simulation results validate the feasibility and the high efficiency of the novel protocol when compared with other existing approaches.