Quorum-Based Asynchronous Power-Saving Protocols for IEEE 802.11 Ad Hoc Networks

This paper investigates the power mode management problem for an IEEE 802.11-based mobile ad hoc network (MANET) that allows mobile hosts to tune to the power-saving (PS) mode. There are two major issues that need to be addressed in this problem: (a) wakeup prediction and (b) neighbor discovery. The former is to deliver buffered packets to a PS host at the right time when its radio is turned on. The latter is to monitor the environment change under a mobile environment. One costly, and not scalable, solution is to time-synchronize all hosts. Another possibility is to design asynchronous protocols as proposed by Tseng et al. in [25]. In this paper, we adopt the latter approach and correlate this problem to the quorum system concept. We identify a rotation closure property for quorum systems. It is shown that any quorum system that satisfies this property can be translated to an asynchronous power-saving protocol for MANETs. Thus, the result bridges the classical quorum system design problem in the area of distributed systems to the power mode management problem in the area of mobile ad hoc networks. We derive a lower bound for quorum sizes for any quorum system that satisfies the rotation closure property. We identify a group of quorum systems that are optimal or near optimal in terms of quorum sizes, which can be translated to efficient asynchronous power-saving protocols. We also propose a new e-torus quorum system, which can be translated to an adaptive protocol that allows designers to trade hosts' neighbor sensibility for power efficiency. Simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate and compare the proposed protocols.     

Energy-efficient neighbor discovery protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

Low energy consumption is a critical design requirement for most wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. Due to minimal transmission power levels, time-varying environmental factors and mobility of nodes, network neighborhood changes frequently. In these conditions, the most critical issue for energy is to minimize the transactions and time consumed for neighbor discovery operations. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient neighbor discovery protocol targeted at synchronized low duty-cycle medium access control (MAC) schemes such as IEEE 802.15.4 and S-MAC. The protocol effectively reduces the need for costly network scans by proactively distributing node schedule information in MAC protocol beacons and by using this information for establishing new communication links. Energy consumption is further reduced by optimizing the beacon transmission rate. The protocol is validated by performance analysis and experimental measurements with physical WSN prototypes. Experimental results show that the protocol can reduce node energy consumption up to 80% at 1–3 m/s node mobility.     

Minimizing broadcast latency and redundancy in asynchronous wireless sensor networks

Asynchronous duty cycle Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols do not require global synchronization because nodes determine their wake-up schedule independently. As a result, these MACs have superior performance to those that employ synchronous duty-cycles in terms of energy expenditure, and advantageously, they are simple to implement. A key limitation is that they do not support efficient broadcast. A node needs to transmit a broadcast packet multiple times via unicast because only a subset of its neighbors may be awake at any given point in time. To address this problem, this paper proposes a centralized and distributed asynchronous broadcast algorithm that achieves minimal broadcast latency and redundancy. In addition, it uses a novel asynchronous MAC protocol that ensures all neighbors of a broadcasting node are awake to receive a broadcast. The performance of our algorithms is evaluated under different network configurations. We show via extensive simulation studies that our algorithms have near optimal network performance in terms of broadcast latency. In particular, compared to OTAB, the best broadcast scheduling algorithm to date, the broadcast latency and transmission times achieved by our designs are 1/5 and 1/2 that of OTAB, respectively.     

On Localized Application-Driven Topology Control for Energy-Efficient Wireless Peer-to-Peer File Sharing

Wireless peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing is widely envisioned as one of the major applications of ad hoc networks in the near future. This trend is largely motivated by the recent advances in high-speed wireless communication technologies and high traffic demand for P2P file sharing applications. To achieve the ambitious goal of realizing a practical wireless P2P network, we need a scalable topology control protocol to solve the neighbor discovery problem and network organization problem. Indeed, we believe that the topology control mechanism should be application driven in that we should try to achieve an efficient connectivity among mobile devices in order to better serve the file sharing application. We propose a new protocol, which consists of two components, namely, adjacency set construction (ASC) and community-based asynchronous wakeup (CAW). Our proposed protocol is shown to be able to enhance the fairness and provide an incentive mechanism in wireless P2P file sharing applications. It is also capable of increasing the energy efficiency.     

一种定向无线自组网邻居发现算法

针对使用定向天线的无线移动网络在自组网过程中邻居搜索时间较长且不确定性较大等问题,提出了一种根据二进制编码序列确定收发模式的异步邻居发现算法,通过为每个节点分配独立的二进制编码来确定节点的收发模式,并根据收发状态给出确定的节点波束扫描方式。讨论了应用于该算法的编码需要满足的条件,并给出一个满足要求的编码序列组,在节点时间异步情况下完成邻居发现的时长具有确定的上界。仿真结果表明,相较其他确定时长的异步邻居搜索算法,该算法能够提高节点间相互发现概率,缩减节点邻居发现的平均和最大用时。     

An asynchronous neighbor discovery algorithm for wireless sensor networks

We consider the problem of determining, in a distributed, asynchronous and scalable manner, what nodes are “neighbors” in a wireless network. Neighbor discovery is an important enabler of network connectivity and energy conservation. An asynchronous, probabilistic neighbor discovery algorithm is presented that permits each node in the network to develop a list of its neighbors, which may be incomplete. The algorithm is analyzed and parameter settings are derived which maximize the fraction of neighbors discovered in a fixed running time. A companion distributed algorithm is also described which allows all the nodes in the network to execute that neighbor discovery algorithm without the need to agree on a common start time.     

PND: a p‐persistent neighbor discovery protocol in wireless networks

In wireless communications research, a number of literature assume that every node knows all of its neighbor nodes. To this end, neighbor discovery research has been conducted, but it still has room for improvement in terms of discovery delay. Furthermore, prior work has overlooked energy efficiency, which is considered as the critical factor in wireless devices or appliances. For better performance with respect to the discovery delay and energy efficiency, we proposed a novel p‐persistent‐based neighbor discovery protocol and devised a simple and light algorithm estimating the number of neighbor nodes to support the proposed protocol. Our protocol requires a lower delay and a smaller number of messages for the discovery process than the existing protocols. For extensive performance evaluation, we adopted extra comparison targets from other research areas within the same context. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Classification Performance of a Three-Product Cyclone

Providing successful data collection in transmitter-initiated wireless sensor networks with mobile Sink (WSN-MS) scenarios is a primary goal of a myriad of critical applications in real world. Unfortunately, the problem of broken links which may occur during data transmission between a source node and a mobile Sink may cause inevitably incomplete data collection. To overcome this challenging issue, we propose in this paper a seamless handover mechanism performed on asynchronous duty cycled MAC protocol on the basis of neighborhood information. By measuring continuously the signal quality of ACKnowledgment messages of transmitted Data during a 1-hop communication, this mechanism allows the source node to continue transmitting data to the mobile Sink using a suitable neighbor node as relay in the case where the Sink node leaves the radio range in direction of that neighbor node. The asynchronous protocol XMAC (without handover) has been chosen as a basic protocol on which we designed our contribution named HXMAC (XMAC with handover). The later was implemented and evaluated using a powerful simulation tool. Experimental results based on the comparison between HXMAC and XMAC clearly showed that handover mechanism is a suitable technique to promote significantly reliability in WSN-MS data collection operation.     

On the power efficiency of cooperative broadcast in dense wireless networks

A fundamental problem in large scale wireless networks is the energy efficient broadcast of source messages to the whole network. The energy consumption increases as the network size grows, and the optimization of broadcast efficiency becomes more important. In this paper, we study the optimal power allocation problem for cooperative broadcast in dense large-scale networks. In the considered cooperation protocol, a single source initiates the transmission and the rest of the nodes retransmit the source message if they have decoded it reliably. Each node is allocated an-orthogonal channel and the nodes improve their receive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), hence the energy efficiency, by maximal-ratio combining the receptions of the same packet from different transmitters. We assume that the decoding of the source message is correct as long as the receive SNR exceeds a predetermined threshold. Under the optimal cooperative broadcasting, the transmission order (i.e., the schedule) and the transmission powers of the source and the relays are designed so that every node receives the source message reliably and the total power consumption is minimized. In general, finding the best scheduling in cooperative broadcast is known to be an NP-complete problem. In this paper, we show that the optimal scheduling problem can be solved for dense networks, which we approximate as a continuum of nodes. Under the continuum model, we derive the optimal scheduling and the optimal power density. Furthermore, we propose low-complexity, distributed and power efficient broadcasting schemes and compare their power consumptions with those-of-a traditional noncooperative multihop transmission     

Multiple token‐based neighbor discovery for directional sensor networks

Directional sensor networks (DSNs) can significantly improve the performance of a network by employing energy efficient communication protocols. Neighbor discovery is a vital part of medium access control (MAC) and routing protocol, which influences the establishment of communication between neighboring nodes. Neighbor discovery is a challenging task in DSNs due to the limited coverage provided by directional antennas. Furthermore, in these networks, communication can only take place when the beams of the directional antennas are pointed toward each other. In this article, we propose a novel multiple token‐based neighbor discovery (MuND) protocol, in which multiple tokens are transmitted based on an area exploration algorithm. The performance of the protocol is evaluated using the Cooja simulator. The simulation results reveal that the proposed MuND protocol achieves lower neighbor discovery latency, with a 100% neighbor discovery ratio, and has a relatively low communication overhead and low energy consumption.     

IPv6的地址结构特点与管理机制分析

本文主要介绍了有关IPv6互联网的网络地址结构及其管理机制。与现行的IPv4地址相比,IPv6在地址的长度、分类方法、表示方法和类型等方面均不同相同。它可有效地解决IP地址枯竭与路由效率低下的问题,同时具有地址聚类性、多播性、任播性和接口多址性等特点;而在IPv6地址管理方面则采用层次化路由选择策略,支持QoS路由协议,将地址解析通过领导发现协议来实现,新增了无态地址的自动配置,使得网络地址的重新编号变得更加简单快速。最后通过模拟仿真的方法,进一步分析说明了IPv6网络的性能。     

低占空比无线传感器网络邻居发现算法研究

低占空比(low duty cycle,LDC)无线传感器网络邻居发现算法是当前无线传感器网络领域的研究热点之一。当前LDC无线传感器网络的邻居发现算法大致可分为同步邻居发现算法和异步邻居发现算法,其中异步发现算法又可分为基于法定人数的调度算法（Grid quorum和 U-connect）和基于中国剩余定理的调度方法(Disco算法)。针对发现延迟和能量消耗,通过仿真实验对当前LDC无线传感器网络邻居发现领域里的典型算法进行了对比分析,在此基础上得出LDC无线传感器网络邻居发现算法新的研究方向。     

An Automatic Presence Service for Low Duty-Cycled Mobile Sensor Networks

We consider providing presence service for duty-cycled wireless sensor networks through a multihop approach. The presence service is to ensure automatic network monitoring by which each node would know whether the sink node is reachable or not. Towards providing such presence service, we tackle three problems: 1) efficient neighbor discovery due to not-always-awake nature of duty-cycling and the mobile environment, 2) light presence message passing from the sink node to all reachable nodes given broadcasting is expensive and difficult in an embedded duty-cycling network, and 3) automatic network monitoring if there is node failure and network partition. In our protocol, in order to save power consumption, an online node which is reachable from the sink node only book-keeps the broadcast schedule of its parent in a breadth-first-search spanning tree in order to trace the online status all along. The offline node which is not reachable from the sink node stays awake periodically based on quorum-based wakeup scheduling, and probes the beacons which may come from online nodes. The presence protocol can automatically detect link failure or network partition, and it can also automatically recover online status for each sensor node if there is a path to the sink node, which is significant for applications that are sensitive to end-to-end latency constraints. The presence protocol proposed is implemented through a layered approach so that it is independent from any specific MAC and routing protocols. We make extensive simulations in order to validate the energy efficiency and reliability of our design.     

一种新的紫外光自组织网络的时分多址接入邻居发现算法

为了适应大 规模及拓扑变化较快的紫外光(UV)自组织网络,本文以提高邻居发现概率为目的,提出了一 种基于时分多址接入(TDMA, time division multiple access)的UV定向邻居发现新算法。新算法在DTRA(directional transmission and reception algorithm)协议的基础上采用了退避时延机制, 并通过邻居判断和维护机制让节点快速更新本地邻居表。实验结果表明,新 算法充分考虑了UV大气传输特性,能够有效地解决节点冲突问题,并通过找到一个最佳退避 时延使得节点冲突 概率和邻居发现时延之间达到一个较好的平衡。     

Multiple Virtual Interfaces for Multi-homing Hosts to Support Inter-technology Handover in PMIPv6 Network

Proxy Mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6), a network-based mobility management protocol, supports multi-homing, inter-technology handover, and flow mobility, with the help of a host’s virtual interface (VI). Several single virtual interface (SVI) schemes have been proposed to support these functions. In the SVI schemes, the link-layer identifier (LL-ID) should be swapped while the host is processing neighbor discovery (ND) after inter-technology handover or flow mobility. That is, a host must replace the LL-ID of a VI contained in a neighbor advertisement with the LL-ID of a physical interface (PI) related to a real connection. Such LL-ID swapping cannot be executed under secure neighbor discovery, and it causes ND processing delay and high overhead to check all outgoing packets. In this paper, we propose a multiple virtual interfaces scheme to solve the problem related to the LL-ID swapping, and to provide good support to the inter-technology handover. In the proposed scheme, there are the same numbers of VIs as the PIs between the data link layer and the network layer of a host. Since each VI maintains its own neighbor cache, the proposed scheme does not require LL-ID swapping, so that it can keep the standard ND process. We explain the basic operation of PMIPv6 inter-technology handover under the proposed scheme and, through NS-3 simulation, evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of ND process delay and inter-technology handover latency.     

Deterministic collision free communication despite continuous motion

We present a deterministic solution for nodes in a mobile wireless ad hoc network to communicate reliably and maintain local neighborhood information. The nodes are located on a two-dimensional plane and may be in continuous motion. In our solution we tile the plane with hexagons. Each hexagon is assigned a color from a finite set of colors. Two hexagons of the same color are located sufficiently far apart so that nodes in these two hexagons cannot interfere with each other’s broadcasts. Based on this partitioning we develop a periodic deterministic schedule for mobile nodes to broadcast. This schedule guarantees collision avoidance. Broadcast slots are tied to geographic locations instead of nodes and the schedule for a node changes dynamically as it moves from tile to tile. The schedule allows nodes to maintain information about their local neighborhood. This information in turn is used to keep the schedule collision-free. We demonstrate the correctness of our algorithm, and discuss how the periodic schedule can be adapted for different scenarios. The periodic schedule, however, does not address the problem of initial neighbor discovery at start-up. We give a separate algorithm for this problem of initially discovering nodes present within communication range at start-up.     

nW-MAC: multiple wake-up provisioning in asynchronously scheduled duty cycle MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks

To reduce the energy cost of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the duty cycle (i.e., periodic wake-up and sleep) concept has been used in several medium access control (MAC) protocols. Although these protocols are energy efficient, they are primarily designed for low-traffic environments and therefore sacrifice delay in order to maximize energy conservation. However, many applications having both low and high traffic demand a duty cycle MAC that is able to achieve better energy utilization with minimum energy loss ensuring delay optimization for timely and effective actions. In this paper, nW-MAC is proposed; this is an asynchronously scheduled and multiple wake-up provisioned duty cycle MAC protocol for WSNs. The nW-MAC employs an asynchronous rendezvous schedule selection technique to provision a maximum of n wake-ups in the operational cycle of a receiver. The proposed MAC is suitable to perform in both low- and high-traffic applications using a reception window-based medium access with a specific RxOp. Furthermore, per cycle multiple wake-up concept ensures optimum energy consumption and delay maintaining a higher throughput, as compare to existing mechanisms. Through analysis and simulations, we have quantified the energy-delay performance and obtained results that expose the effectiveness of nW-MAC.     

一种适于波束切换移动自组网的邻居发现改进算法

基于多波束切换的移动自组网系统在未来通信中具有广阔的应用前景,邻居发现是基于多波束切换的移动自组网系统的关键技术之一。现有基于多波束切换的移动自组网邻居发现算法在波束交叠情况下无法选择最优通信波束,为了解决基于多波束切换的移动自组网邻居发现过程中的最优通信波束选择问题,提出一种改进算法,在邻居发现过程中增加接收信号质量评估机制,增强网络的稳定性,提高网络吞吐量,并通过仿真验证了在波束交叠的情况下系统的累计平均接收电平优于传统方法。     

Delay-efficient MAC protocol with traffic differentiation and run-time parameter adaptation for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks

This paper presents an asynchronous cascading wake-up MAC protocol for heterogeneous traffic gathering in low-power wireless sensor networks. It jointly considers energy/delay optimization and switches between two modes, according to the traffic type and delay requirements. The first mode is high duty cycle, where energy is traded-off for a reduced latency in presence of realtime traffic (RT). The second mode is low duty cycle, which is used for non-realtime traffic and gives more priority to energy saving. The proposed protocol, DuoMAC, has many features. First, it quietly adjusts the wake-up of a node according to (1) its parent’s wake-up time and, (2) its estimated load. Second, it incorporates a service differentiation through an improved contention window adaptation to meet delay requirements. A comprehensive analysis is provided in the paper to investigate the effectiveness of the proposed protocol in comparison with some state-of-the-art energy-delay efficient duty-cycled MAC protocols, namely DMAC, LL-MAC, and Diff-MAC. The network lifetime and the maximum end-to-end packet latency are adequately modeled, and numerically analyzed. The results show that LL-MAC has the best performance in terms of energy saving, while DuoMAC outperforms all the protocols in terms of delay reduction. To balance the delay/energy objectives, a runtime parameter adaptation mechanism has been integrated to DuoMAC. The mechanism relies on a constrained optimization problem with energy minimization in the objective function, constrained by the delay required for RT. The proposed protocol has been implemented on real motes using MicaZ and TinyOS. Experimental results show that the protocol clearly outperforms LL-MAC in terms of latency reduction, and more importantly, that the runtime parameter adaptation provides additional reduction of the latency while further decreasing the energy cost.     

An efficient NBTI-aware wake-up strategy: Concept,design, and manipulation

High leakage power consumption has become a serious problem in modern IC designs. By isolating a circuit block that is not in use from the power supply, power gating has become one of the most effective ways to reduce leakage power. During the circuit wake-up process, turning on sleep transistors simultaneously may induce an excessive surge current, which will threaten signal integrity. To avoid significant surge currents, sleep transistor wake-up sequences should be carefully designed. On the other hand, PMOS sleep transistors may suffer from the Negative-Bias Temperature Instability (NBTI) effect, where the wake-up time is increased after circuit aging. Conventional fixed wake-up sequence-based methods do not consider the NBTI effect, which may result in a longer or an unacceptable wake-up time after circuit aging. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel reconfigurable circuit structure that can reconfigure the wake-up sequence and a novel NBTI-aware wake-up strategy to reduce the wake-up time. Our strategy first finds a set of proper wake-up sequences under different aging circumstances and then dynamically reconfigures wake-up sequences at runtime based on an actual aging scenario (i.e. different months or years of aging). The experimental results show that compared with a traditional fixed wake-up sequence approach, our strategy can reduce up to 49.78% of the average wake-up time latency. In the meantime, according to our estimation, to implement the reconfigurable wake-up sequence structure, the parasitic area overhead is only about 0.27% with a larger benchmark.