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.      

WRE‐OLSR,a new scheme for enhancing the lifetime within ad hoc and wireless sensor networks

Within ad hoc and wireless sensor networks, communications are accomplished in dynamic environments with a random movement of mobile devices. Thus, routing protocols over these networks are an important concern to offer efficient network scalability, manage topology information, and prolong the network lifetime. Optimized link state routing (OLSR) is one of those routing protocols implemented in ad hoc and wireless sensor networks. Because of its proactive technique, routes between two nodes are established in a very short time, but it can spend a lot of resources for selecting the multipoint relays (MPRs: nodes responsible for routing data) and exchanging topology control information. Thus, nodes playing for a long time a role of MPR within networks implementing such protocol can rapidly exhaust their batteries, which create route failures and affect the network lifetime. Our main approach relies on analyzing this concern by introducing a new criterion that implements a combination between the residual energy of a node and its reachability in order to determine the optimal number of MPRs and sustain the network lifetime. Simulations performed illustrate obviously that our approach is more significant compared with the basic heuristic used by original OLSR to compute the MPR set of a node.     

DDRP: An efficient data‐driven routing protocol for wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks

Introduction of mobile sinks into a wireless sensor network can largely improve the network performance. However, sink mobility can cause unexpected changes of network topology, which may bring excessive protocol overhead for route maintenance and may offset the benefit from using mobile sinks. In this paper, we propose an efficient data‐driven routing protocol (DDRP) to address this problem. The design objective is to effectively reduce the protocol overhead for data gathering in wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks. DDRP exploits the broadcast feature of wireless medium for route learning. Specifically, each data packet carries an additional option recording the known distance from the sender of the packet to target mobile sink. The overhearing of transmission of such a data packet will gratuitously provide each listener a route to a mobile sink. Continuous such route‐learning among nodes will provide fresh route information to more and more nodes in the network. When no route to mobile sink is known, random walk routing simply is adopted for data packet forwarding. Simulation results show that DDRP can achieve much lower protocol overhead and longer network lifetime as compared with existing work while preserving high packet delivery ratio. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

WHOMoVeS: An optimized broadband sensor network for military vehicle tracking

With the advance of sensing technologies and their applications, advanced sensor networks are gaining increasing interest. For certain sensitive applications, heterogeneous sensors can be deployed in the monitored space to ensure scalability, high-speed communication, and long network lifetime. Hybrid sensor networks have capabilities to combine the use of both resource-rich and resource-impoverished sensor nodes. This paper proposes a heterogeneous broadband sensor network architecture for military vehicle tracking. Powerful sensor devices with good bandwidth and energy capabilities are used as a communication backbone while energy sensors are used to track moving targets. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cluster-Head Restricted Energy Efficient Protocol (CREEP) for Routing in Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Networks

A magnanimous number of collaborative sensor nodes make up a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). These sensor nodes are outfitted with low-cost and low-power sensors. The routing protocols are responsible for ensuring communications while considering the energy constraints of the system. Achieving a higher network lifetime is the need of the hour in WSNs. Currently, many network layer protocols are considering a heterogeneous WSN, wherein a certain number of the sensors are rendered higher energy as compared to the rest of the nodes. In this paper, we have critically analysed the various stationary heterogeneous clustering algorithms and assessed their lifetime and throughput performance in mobile node settings also. Although many newer variants of Distributed Energy-Efficiency Clustering (DEEC) scheme execute proficiently in terms of energy efficiency, they suffer from high system complexity due to computation and selection of large number of Cluster Heads (CHs). A protocol in form of Cluster-head Restricted Energy Efficient Protocol (CREEP) has been proposed to overcome this limitation and to further improve the network lifetime by modifying the CH selection thresholds in a two-level heterogeneous WSN. Simulation results establish that proposed solution ameliorates in terms of network lifetime as compared to others in stationary as well as mobile WSN scenarios.     

Low-Energy Adaptive Unequal Clustering Protocol Using Fuzzy c-Means in Wireless Sensor Networks

Clustering technique in wireless sensor networks incorporate proper utilization of the limited energy resources of the deployed sensor nodes with the highest residual energy that can be used to gather data and send the information. However, the problem of unbalanced energy consumption exists in a particular cluster node in the network. Some more powerful nodes act as cluster head to control sensor network operation when the network is organized into heterogeneous clusters. It is important to assume that energy consumption of these cluster head nodes is balanced. Often the network is organized into clusters of equal size where cluster head nodes bear unequal loads. Instead in this paper, we proposed a new protocol low-energy adaptive unequal clustering protocol using Fuzzy c-means in wireless sensor networks (LAUCF), an unequal clustering size model for the organization of network based on Fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm, which can lead to more uniform energy dissipation among the cluster head nodes, thus increasing network lifetime. A heuristic comparison between our proposed protocol LAUCF and other different energy-aware protocol including low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) has been carried out. Simulation result shows that our proposed heterogeneous clustering approach using FCM protocol is more effective in prolonging the network lifetime compared with LEACH and other protocol for long run.     

An Integrated Approach to Sensor Role Selection

Many sensor network applications require consistent coverage of the region in which they are deployed over the course of the network lifetime. However, because sensor networks may be deployed randomly, node distribution and data redundancy in some regions of the network may be lower than in others. The sensors in the sparsest regions should be considered more critical to the sensor network application since their removal would likely result in unmonitored regions in the environment. For this reason, sensors in the more densely deployed regions should be considered more favorable as candidates to route the traffic of other nodes in the network. In this work, we propose several coverage-aware routing costs that allow traffic to be routed around the sparsely deployed regions so that the coverage of the environment can remain high for a long lifetime. We also propose an integrated route discovery and sensor selection protocol called DAPR that further lengthens network lifetime by jointly selecting routers and active sensors, again with the goal of minimizing the use of sensors in sparsely covered areas. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach in extending network lifetime nearly to the extent that can be reached using a centralized approach based on global network knowledge.     

On Prolonging the Lifetime for Wireless Video Sensor Networks

This paper investigates strategies for prolonging the system lifetime for wireless video sensor networks, by adopting a mobile sink and solar-powered video sensors. Issues of tracking moving objects in wireless video sensor networks are studied, and the effectiveness of adopting a mobile sink is evaluated. This paper applies a power-rate-distortion analysis framework, which provides a theoretical fundamental to quantify various properties of wireless video sensor networks. The performance of wireless video sensor networks is evaluated with a mobile sink versus a static sink, under different cluster sizes and number of sensors. Comparisons of network lifetime, tracking error, video distortion, are also covered in this paper. In addition, this paper also evaluates the performance of solar-powered video sensors under an unequal layered clustering topology.     

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。     

Overlapping particle swarms for energy-efficient routing in sensor networks

Sensor networks are traditionally built using battery-powered, collaborative devices. These sensor nodes do not rely on dedicated infrastructure services (e.g., routers) to relay data. Rather, a communal effort is employed where the sensor nodes both generate data as well as forward data for other nodes. A routing protocol is needed in order for the sensors to determine viable paths through the network, but routing protocols designed for wired networks and even ad hoc networks are not sufficient given the energy overhead needed to operate them. We propose an energy-aware routing protocol, based on overlapping swarms of particles, that offers reliable path selection while reducing the energy consumption for the route selection process. Our particle-based routing with overlapping swarms for energy-efficiency algorithm shows promise in extending the life of battery-powered networks while still providing robust routing functionality to maintain network reliability.     

A Green Clustering Protocol for Mobile Sensor Network Using Particle Swarm Optimization

Energy consumption of sensor nodes is one of the crucial issues in prolonging the lifetime of wireless sensor networks. One of the methods that can improve the utilization of sensor nodes batteries is the clustering method. In this paper, we propose a green clustering protocol for mobile sensor networks using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. We define a new fitness function that can optimize the energy consumption of the whole network and minimize the relative distance between cluster heads and their respective member nodes. We also take into account the mobility factor when defining the cluster membership, so that the sensor nodes can join the cluster that has the similar mobility pattern. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with well-known clustering protocols developed for wireless sensor networks such as LEACH (low-energy adaptive clustering hierarchy) and protocols designed for sensor networks with mobile nodes called CM-IR (clustering mobility-invalid round). In addition, we also modify the improved version of LEACH called MLEACH-C, so that it is applicable to the mobile sensor nodes environment. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol using PSO algorithm can improve the energy consumption of the network, achieve better network lifetime, and increase the data delivered at the base station.     

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.     

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。     

Experimental Evaluation of Topology Control and Synchronization for In-Building Sensor Network Applications

While multi-hop networks consisting of 100s or 1000s of inexpensive embedded sensors are emerging as a means of mining data from the environment, inadequate network lifetime remains a major impediment to real-world deployment. This paper describes several applications deployed throughout our building that monitor conference room occupancy and environmental statistics and provide access to room reservation status. Because it is often infeasible to locate sensors and display devices near power outlets, we designed two protocols that allow energy conservation in a large class of sensor network applications. The first protocol, Relay Organization (ReOrg), is a topology control protocol which systematically shifts the network’s routing burden to energy-rich nodes, exploiting heterogeneity. The second protocol, Relay Synchronization (ReSync), is a MAC protocol that extends network lifetime by allowing nodes to sleep most of the time, yet wake to receive packets. When combined, ReOrg and ReSync lower the duty cycle of the nodes, extending network lifetime. To our knowledge, this research provides the first experimental testbed evaluation of energy-aware topology control integrated with energy-saving synchronization. Using a 54-node testbed, we demonstrate an 82–92% reduction in energy consumption, depending on traffic load. By rotating the burden of routing, our protocols can extend network lifetime by 5–10 times. Finally, we demonstrate that a small number of wall-powered nodes can significantly improve the lifetime of a battery-powered network. W. Steven Conner is a Wireless Network Architect in the Communications Technology Lab, Intel Research and Development. He currently leads a team developing self-configuring wireless mesh networking technology and is an active participant in IEEE 802.11 standards development. His current research interests include wireless mesh networking, sensor networks, and network self-configuration protocols. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Arizona. Jasmeet Chhabra received B.E. (1996) and M.S. (1999) degrees from University of Delhi and University of Maryland, College Park, respectively. Since 1999 he has been a researcher in the Communications Technology Lab, Intel Research and Development. His current research interests include sensor networks, ubiquitous computing, mesh networks and security. Mark Yarvis received B.S. (1991), M.S. (1998), and Ph.D. (2001) degrees in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Since 2001, he has been a Senior Researcher in the Communications Technology Lab, Intel Research and Development. He is currently the principle investigator of the Intel Research Heterogeneous Sensor Networking project. His research interests include heterogeneous systems, sensor networks, and pervasive and mobile computing. He is a member of IEEE and ACM. WWW: Lakshman Krishnamurthy manages the radio networks initiative in the Intel Corporate Technology Group and is also the principal investigator of the EcoSense wireless sensor network Strategic Research Project. He leads research efforts into new wireless mesh protocols and techniques to provide ease of use and improve performance of wireless networks. As part of the EcoSense project, Lakshman is driving wireless sensing into Intel fabs by piloting a preventative maintenance application. Currently, he also serves on the program committees of the ACM SenSyS and IEEE SECOM conferences. Lakshman received a Ph.D in computer science from the University of Kentucky and a BE in instrumentation technology from the University of Mysore, India.This revised version was published online in August 2005 with a corrected cover date.     

Hierarchical distributed management clustering protocol for wireless sensor networks

In recent years, there has been a marked increase in the use of wireless sensor networks in various environments such as crisis areas, military operations, and monitoring systems. These networks do not use a fixed network infrastructure and therefore they are a popular choice for highly dynamic environments. One of the main concerns in these networks is the topology management issue, which the clustering method is a subfield for that. The main objective of clustering methods is optimizing the energy consumption. This paper proposes a new clustering protocol, which uses many parameters such as the activity history of each node, local and general state of nodes and their resources condition to determine the best cluster heads and members of each cluster that can increase the network lifetime, fair resource consumption and network coverage.     

基于多簇点简化的K容错能量均衡拓扑控制方案

针对异构监测传感器网络结构,设计了一个容错拓扑控制方案,在可以减少网络冗余的同时,兼顾了网络的稳定性,并且保证生成拓扑具有最小的能量消耗。该方案首先将异构监测传感器网络简化为同构传感器网络以简化计算,然后根据节点的位置信息,建立各监测节点到簇节点的能量消耗最小,并且可以保证K容错的K连通子图。该方案在保证传感器网络K连通的前提下,可以最大限度减少传感器网络中的冗余路径,且可以较好地均衡无线传感器网络能耗,延长网络生命周期。     

An optimised resource aware approach to information collection in ad hoc networks

In ad hoc networks there is a need for all-to-one protocols that allow for information collection or “sensing” of the state of an ad hoc network and the nodes that comprise it. Such protocols may be used for service discovery, auto-configuration, network management, topology discovery or reliable flooding. There is a parallel between this type of sensing in ad hoc networks and that of sensor networks. However, ad hoc networks and sensor networks differ in their application, construction, characteristics and constraints. The main priority of sensor networks is for the flow of data from sensors back to a sink, but in an ad hoc network this may be of secondary importance. Hence, protocols suitable to sensor networks are not necessarily suitable to ad hoc networks and vice versa. We propose, Resource Aware Information Collection (RAIC), a distributed two phased resource aware approach to information collection in ad hoc networks. RAIC utilises a resource aware optimised flooding mechanism to both disseminate requests and initialise a backbone of resource suitable nodes responsible for relaying replies back to the node collecting information. RAIC in the process of collecting information from all nodes in an ad hoc network is shown to consume less energy and introduce less overhead compared with Directed Diffusion and a brute force approach. Importantly, over multiple successive queries (in an energy constrained environment), the use of resource awareness allows for the load of relaying to be distributed to those nodes most suitable, thereby extending the lifetime of the network.     

Energy-aware on-demand scatternet formation and routing for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks

Bluetooth is a promising short-range wireless communication technology with the characteristics of interference resilience and power efficiency, both desirable for wireless sensor networks. The new Intel Mote sensor devices have Bluetooth technology incorporated as the standard wireless communications interface. When using Bluetooth in applications where multihop routing is required, groups of Bluetooth piconets combine together to form a scatternet. However, most of the existing scatternet formation protocols are designed to facilitate communications between any two pairs of devices, regardless of the actual traffic demand pattern. For wireless sensor network applications with low-duty-cycle traffic patterns, an on-demand scatternet formation protocol can achieve significant power saving by avoiding unnecessary network connectivity. To that end, we introduce an on-demand scatternet and route formation protocol designed specifically for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks. Our protocol builds a scatternet on demand, and is able to cope with multiple sources initiating traffic simultaneously. In addition, our energy-aware forwarding nodes selection scheme is based on local information only, and results in more uniform network resource utilization and improved network lifetime. Simulation results show that our protocol can provide scatternet formation with reasonable delay and good load balance, which results in prolonged network lifetime for Bluetooth-based wireless sensor networks.     

Increasing network lifetime by balancing node energy consumption in heterogeneous sensor networks

Sensor nodes are powered by battery and have severe energy constraints. The typical many‐to‐one traffic pattern causes uneven energy consumption among sensor nodes, that is, sensor nodes near the base station or a cluster head have much heavier traffic burden and run out of power much faster than other nodes. The uneven node energy dissipation dramatically reduces sensor network lifetime. In a previous work, we presented the chessboard clustering scheme to increase network lifetime by balancing node energy consumption. To achieve good performance and scalability, we propose to form a heterogeneous sensor network by deploying a few powerful high‐end sensors in addition to a large number of low‐end sensors. In this paper, we design an efficient routing protocol based on the chessboard clustering scheme, and we compute the minimum node density for satisfying a given lifetime constraint. Simulation experiments show that the chessboard clustering‐based routing protocol balances node energy consumption very well and dramatically increases network lifetime, and it performs much better than two other clustering‐based schemes. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Moralism: mobility prediction with link stability based multicast routing protocol in MANETs

In recent research, link stability is getting tremendous attention in mobile adhoc networks (MANETs), because of several impediments that occur in a reliable and robust network. Link stability metric is used to improve network performance in terms of end-to-end delay, data success delivery ratio (DSDR) and available route time (ART). Energy consumption, bandwidth and communication delay of major concern in ad hoc networks. A high mobility of MANET nodes reduces the reliability of network communication. In a dynamic networks, high mobility of the nodes makes it very difficult to predict the dynamic routing topology and hence cause route/link failures. Multicast in MANETs is an emerging trend that effectively improves the performance while lowering the energy consumption and bandwidth usage. Multicast routing protocol transmits a packet to multicast a group at a given time instant to achieve a better utilization of resources. In this paper, node mobility is considered to map better their movement in the network. So, the links with long active duration time can be identified as a stable link for route construction. Variation in signal strength is used to identify whether the direction of the node is towards or away from estimating node. We consider signal strength as QoS metric to calculate link stability for route construction. Efforts are made to identify the link with highly probable longer lifetime as the best suitable link between two consecutive nodes. We predict the movement time of nodes that define the route path to the node destination. Exata/cyber simulator is used for network simulation. The simulation results of the proposed routing protocol are compared with on-demand multicast routing protocol and E-ODMRP, which works on minimum hop count path. Analysis of our simulation results has shown improvement of various routing performance metrics such as DSDR, ART, routing overhead and packet drop ratio.