A cluster-based power-efficient MAC scheme for event-driven sensing applications

In developing an architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that is extensible to hundreds of thousands of heterogeneous nodes, fundamental advances in energy efficient communication protocols must occur. In this paper, we first propose an energy-efficient and robust intra-cluster communication bit-map assisted (BMA) MAC protocol for large-scale cluster-based WSNs and then derive energy models for BMA, conventional TDMA, and energy efficient TDMA (E-TDMA) using two different approaches. We use simulation to validate these analytical models. BMA is intended for event-driven sensing applications, that is, sensor nodes forward data to the cluster head only if significant events are observed. It has low complexity and utilizes a dynamic scheduling scheme. Clustering is a promising distributing technique used in large-scale WSNs, and when combined with an appropriate MAC scheme, high energy efficiency can be achieved. The results indicate that BMA can improve the performance of wireless sensor networks by reducing energy expenditure and packet latency. The performance of BMA as an intra-cluster MAC scheme relative to E-TDMA depends on the sensor node traffic offer load and several other key system parameters. For most sensor-based applications, the values of these parameters can be constrained such that BMA provides enhanced performance.     

Energy Efficient Reliable Data Collection in Wireless Sensor Networks with Asymmetric Links

Field measurements reveal that radio link asymmetry has a severe impact on reliable data delivery. We analyze the energy efficiencies of selected reliability schemes for asymmetric radio links using theoretical models. The analysis provides guidelines for retransmission control so as to balance between reliability and energy consumption. We also design two enhancements to the “implicit” ARQ scheme addressing the negative effects of asymmetric radio links. The energy efficiencies of these algorithms are explicitly derived using our theoretical model and validated by simulations and field trials. Based on the analysis of the two enhanced algorithms, we propose an improvement, referred to as Energy Efficient Reliable Data Collection (EERDC) that controls the retransmissions of the enhanced ARQ schemes. Simulations and field trials confirm our theoretical findings and demonstrate that our proposed EERDC algorithm alleviates the impact of link asymmetry and achieves energy savings.

Wireless sensor networks: Enabling technology for ambient intelligence

Wireless sensor networks are one of the most rapidly evolving research and development fields for microelectronics. Their applications are countless, and the market potentials are huge. However, many technical hurdles have to be overcome to achieve a widespread diffusion of wireless sensor network technology. This paper summarizes the trends of evolution in wireless sensor network nodes, focusing on hardware architectures and fabrication technology. We describe four generations of sensor networks (obtrusive, parasitic, symbiotic and bio-inspired), moving from the recent past to the future. We outline the key research challenges and the common themes in the field.     

Clamp-and-Forget: A self-sustainable non-invasive wireless sensor node for smart metering applications

Measuring and managing the power consumption of household appliances, as well as that of industrial machineries, is becoming more and more important to improve the distribution and usage of the electrical energy and to reduce the energy bill. We present the design of a non-invasive wireless current meter which can measure AC current up to $60A_{\mathit{RMS}}$ exploiting a small clamp-on inductive sensor. The novelty of the design is a subsystem consisting of a harvesting circuit designed to extract energy from the same current transducer used for measurements. Experiments have been conducted to validate the approach, to assess the accuracy of the sensing system and deviations due to the energy harvester, and to determine the condition which permits us to achieve the energy neutrality and thus, a self-sustainable smart meter.     

FP-MAC: A distributed MAC algorithm for 802.15.4-like wireless sensor networks

In this paper we focus on the problems of high latency and low throughput arising from the periodic operation of MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks. In order to meet both design criteria we propose an energy-efficient, low delay, fast-periodic MAC algorithm, namely FP-MAC, that is exclusively designed for 802.15.4-like networks utilizing in full the standard’s physical layer. Our proposal relies on the short periodic communication operation of the nodes comprising the WSN. This is achieved by decreasing the actions that a node needs to perform at the start of every communication period and by incorporating a variable radio-on operation. Moreover, the algorithm introduces differences in nodes’ scheduling to further reduce delay. Local synchronization and the crucial task of determining the proper timing for transmission and reception of data is achieved through the periodic broadcast of special synchronization frames at the beginning of each on-period. FP-MAC is evaluated and compared to S-MAC and T-MAC through extensive simulations, showing a significant improvement in terms of low energy consumption and average MAC delay.     

Controlled sink mobility for prolonging wireless sensor networks lifetime

This paper demonstrates the advantages of using controlled mobility in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for increasing their lifetime, i.e., the period of time the network is able to provide its intended functionalities. More specifically, for WSNs that comprise a large number of statically placed sensor nodes transmitting data to a collection point (the sink), we show that by controlling the sink movements we can obtain remarkable lifetime improvements. In order to determine sink movements, we first define a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) analytical model whose solution determines those sink routes that maximize network lifetime. Our contribution expands further by defining the first heuristics for controlled sink movements that are fully distributed and localized. Our Greedy Maximum Residual Energy (GMRE) heuristic moves the sink from its current location to a new site as if drawn toward the area where nodes have the highest residual energy. We also introduce a simple distributed mobility scheme (Random Movement or RM) according to which the sink moves uncontrolled and randomly throughout the network. The different mobility schemes are compared through extensive ns2-based simulations in networks with different nodes deployment, data routing protocols, and constraints on the sink movements. In all considered scenarios, we observe that moving the sink always increases network lifetime. In particular, our experiments show that controlling the mobility of the sink leads to remarkable improvements, which are as high as sixfold compared to having the sink statically (and optimally) placed, and as high as twofold compared to uncontrolled mobility. Stefano Basagni holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Dallas (December 2001) and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Milano, Italy (May 1998). He received his B.Sc. degree in computer science from the University of Pisa, Italy, in 1991. Since Winter 2002 he is on faculty at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University, in Boston, MA. From August 2000 to January 2002 he was professor of computer science at the Department of Computer Science of the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, The University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Basagni’s current research interests concern research and implementation aspects of mobile networks and wireless communications systems, Bluetooth and sensor networking, definition and performance evaluation of network protocols and theoretical and practical aspects of distributed algorithms. Dr. Basagni has published over four dozens of referred technical papers and book chapters. He is also co-editor of two books. Dr. Basagni served as a guest editor of the special issue of the Journal on Special Topics in Mobile Networking and Applications (MONET) on Multipoint Communication in Wireless Mobile Networks, of the special issue on mobile ad hoc networks of the Wiley’s Interscience’s Wireless Communications & Mobile Networks journal, and of the Elsevier’s journal Algorithmica on algorithmic aspects of mobile computing and communications. Dr. Basagni serves as a member of the editorial board and of the technical program committee of ACM and IEEE journals and international conferences. He is a senior member of the ACM (including the ACM SIGMOBILE), senior member of the IEEE (Computer and Communication societies), and member of ASEE (American Society for Engineering Education). Alessio Carosi received the M.S. degree “summa cum laude” in Computer Science in 2004 from Rome University “La Sapienza.” He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Computer Science at Rome University “La Sapienza.” His research interests include protocols for ad hoc and sensor networks, underwater systems and delay tolerant networking. Emanuel Melachrinoudis received the Ph.D. degree in industrial engineering and operations research from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA. He is currently the Director of Industrial Engineering and Associate Chairman of the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at Northeastern University, Boston, MA. His research interests are in the areas of network optimization and multiple criteria optimization with applications to telecommunication networks, distribution networks, location and routing. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Operational Research. He has published in journals such as Management Science, Transportation Science, Networks, European Journal of Operational Research, Naval Research Logistics and IIE Transactions. Chiara Petrioli received the Laurea degree “summa cum laude” in computer science in 1993, and the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering in 1998, both from Rome University “La Sapienza,” Italy. She is currently Associate Professor with the Computer Science Department at Rome University “La Sapienza.” Her current work focuses on ad hoc and sensor networks, Delay Tolerant Networks, Personal Area Networks, Energy-conserving protocols, QoS in IP networks and Content Delivery Networks where she contributed around sixty papers published in prominent international journals and conferences. Prior to Rome University she was research associate at Politecnico di Milano and was working with the Italian Space agency (ASI) and Alenia Spazio. Dr. Petrioli was guest editor of the special issue on “Energy-conserving protocols in wireless Networks” of the ACM/Kluwer Journal on Special Topics in Mobile Networking and Applications (ACM MONET) and is associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, the ACM/Kluwer Wireless Networks journal, the Wiley InterScience Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing journal and the Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks journal. She has served in the organizing committee and technical program committee of several leading conferences in the area of networking and mobile computing including ACM Mobicom, ACM Mobihoc, IEEE ICC,IEEE Globecom. She is member of the steering committee of ACM Sensys and of the international conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking and Services (Mobiquitous) and serves as member of the ACM SIGMOBILE executive committee. Dr. Petrioli was a Fulbright scholar. She is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM. Z. Maria Wang received her Bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering with the highest honor from Beijing Institute of Light Industry in China, her M.S. degree in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Dalhousie University, Canada and her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering/Operations Research from Northeastern University, Boston. She served as a R&D Analyst for General Dynamics. Currently MS. Wang serves as an Optimization Analyst with Nomis Solutions, Inc.     

A novel low-drop CMOS active rectifier for RF-powered devices: Experimental results

We present, in this paper, a new full-wave rectifier topology. It uses MOS transistors as low-loss switches to achieve a significant increase in overall power efficiency and reduced voltage drop. The design does neither require an internal power source nor an auxiliary signal path for power delivery at startup. The highest voltages available in the circuit are used to drive the gates of selected transistors to reduce the leakages and to lower their channel on-resistance, while having high transconductance. The proposed rectifier was characterized with the SpectreS simulator under the Cadence environment and then fabricated using the standard TSMC 0.18 μm CMOS process. The proposed full-wave rectifier is particularly relevant for wirelessly powered applications, such as implantable microelectronic devices (IMD), wireless sensors, and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. When connected to a sinusoidal source of 3.3 VAC nominal amplitude, it allows improving the power efficiency by 10% and the average output voltage by 16% when compared to other published results.     

A dual-mode energy efficient encryption protocol for wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel link-layer encryption protocol for wireless sensor networks. The protocol design aims to reduce energy consumption by reducing security related communication overhead. This is done by merging security related data of consecutive packets. The merging (or combining packets) based on simple mathematical operations helps to reduce energy consumption by eliminating the requirement to send security related fields in headers and trailers. We name our protocol as the Compact Security Protocol referred to as C-Sec. In addition to energy savings, the C-Sec protocol also includes a unique security feature of hiding the packet header information. This feature makes it more difficult to trace the flow of wireless communication, and helps to minimize the cost of defending against replay attacks. We performed rigorous testing of the C-Sec protocol and compared it with well-known protocols including TinySec, MiniSec, SNEP and Zigbee. Our performance evaluation demonstrates that the C-Sec protocol outperforms other protocols in terms of energy savings. We also evaluated our protocol with respect to other performance metrics including queuing delay and error probability.     

Exploring geographic context awareness for data dissemination on mobile ad hoc networks

The use of mobile software agents is a promising approach to implement services and disseminate data over ad hoc networks. This paper presents an analysis of mobile autonomous agents with different levels of intelligence that allow them to make usage of the positioning information with different complexity in a mobile ad hoc network aiming at efficient data dissemination. This information considers the nodes current and future locations, as well as the route used to reach their destinations, depending on the agents’ intelligence. Using this information, the agents decide their movement from node to node during opportunistic connections in order to accomplish their goals related to data dissemination and/or service provisioning. The analysis of this proposal is done in the context of a sensor network application, implemented by sensing services provided by mobile agents, which run on top of an infrastructure-less Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET). Simulation results are presented and discussed to support the proposed ideas.     

无线传感器网络中协作通信的能耗优化方法研究

针对能量受限的无线传感器网络,该文综合考虑了协作节点数量和调制方式对系统能量有效性的影响,提出一种能量最优的综合优化方法。文中首先给出了在Rayleigh衰落信道环境下,协作通信系统采用二相相移键控(BPSK)和M进制正交幅度调制(MQAM)时误码率的闭式表达,同时对协作通信的系统能耗进行了分析。在此基础上,根据能耗最小化原则对协作节点数量和调制方式进行了联合优化。仿真结果表明,与调制方式固定或协作节点数固定的系统相比,该方案能进一步降低协作通信的系统能耗。     

一维无线传感器网络分簇通信方案能量效率研究

为了提高无线传感器网络的能量有效性,该文在分析基于分簇的传统方案和协作分集数据传输方案的能量效率基础上,提出了一维传感器网络分簇多用户分集数据传送方案(CMDDTS)。理论分析表明能量开销依赖于数据融合比、簇内通信的发送功率、簇间通信的接收功率以及电路消耗的功率和簇内传感器的数目,仿真结果验证了所提方案的能量效率优于传统方案和协作分集数据传送方案。     

Energy aware efficient geographic routing in lossy wireless sensor networks with environmental energy supply

Wireless sensor networks are characterized by multihop wireless lossy links and resource constrained nodes. Energy efficiency is a major concern in such networks. In this paper, we study Geographic Routing with Environmental Energy Supply (GREES) and propose two protocols, GREES-L and GREES-M, which combine geographic routing and energy efficient routing techniques and take into account the realistic lossy wireless channel condition and the renewal capability of environmental energy supply when making routing decisions. Simulation results show that GREESs are more energy efficient than the corresponding residual energy based protocols and geographic routing protocols without energy awareness. GREESs can maintain higher mean residual energy on nodes, and achieve better load balancing in terms of having smaller standard deviation of residual energy on nodes. Both GREES-L and GREES-M exhibit graceful degradation on end-to-end delay, but do not compromise the end-to-end throughput performance. Kai Zeng received his B.E. degree in Communication Engineering and M.E. degree in Communication and Information System both from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, in 2001 and 2004, respectively. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research interests are in the areas of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks with emphases on energy-efficient protocol, cross-layer design, routing, and network security. Kui Ren received his B. Eng. and M. Eng. both from Zhejiang University, China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively. He worked as a research assistant at Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences from March 2001 to January 2003, at Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore from January 2003 to August 2003, and at Information and Communications University, South Korea from September 2003 to June 2004. Currently he is a PhD candidate in the ECE department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research interests include ad hoc/sensor network security, wireless mesh network security, Internet security, and security and privacy in ubiquitous computing environments. Wenjing Lou is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Florida in 2003. She received the M.A.Sc. degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1998, the M.E. degree and the B.E. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, in 1996 and 1993 respectively. From December 1997 to July 1999, she worked as a Research Engineer in Network Technology Research Center, Nanyang Technological University. Her current research interests are in the areas of ad hoc and sensor networks, with emphases on network and system security and routing. Patrick J. Moran received his MSEE from Carnegie Mellon University, 1993. He is currently the CTO and Founder of AirSprite Technologies Inc, and is driving the company to utilize advanced networking protocols for low-power wireless network systems. His interests include architecture, protocols and high performance implementation of emerging communication technologies. Patrick has been involved in deployment of communication and signal processing technologies since graduating from the University of Minn. in 1986. He holds several patents and publications relating to storage, medical and data processing information systems. He is a member of the IEEE.     

Topology control of tactical wireless sensor networks using energy efficient zone routing

The US Department of Defense (DoD) routinely uses wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for military tactical communications. Sensor node die-out has a significant impact on the topology of a tactical WSN. This is problematic for military applications where situational data is critical to tactical decision making. To increase the amount of time all sensor nodes remain active within the network and to control the network topology tactically, energy efficient routing mechanisms must be employed. In this paper, we aim to provide realistic insights on the practical advantages and disadvantages of using established routing techniques for tactical WSNs. We investigate the following established routing algorithms: direct routing, minimum transmission energy (MTE), Low Energy Adaptive Cluster Head routing (LEACH), and zone clustering. Based on the node die out statistics observed with these algorithms and the topological impact the node die outs have on the network, we develop a novel, energy efficient zone clustering algorithm called EZone. Via extensive simulations using MATLAB, we analyze the effectiveness of these algorithms on network performance for single and multiple gateway scenarios and show that the EZone algorithm tactically controls the topology of the network, thereby maintaining significant service area coverage when compared to the other routing algorithms.     

Photovoltaic scavenging systems: Modeling and optimization

The interest in embedded portable systems and wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that scavenge energy from the environment has been increasing over the last years. Thanks to the progress in the design of low-power circuits, such devices consume less and less power and are promising candidates to perform continued operation by the use of renewable energy sources. The adoption of maximum power point tracking (MPPT) techniques in photovoltaic scavengers increases the energy harvesting efficiency and leads to several benefits such as the possibility to shrink the size of photovoltaic modules and energy reservoirs. Unfortunately, the optimization of this process under non-stationary light conditions is still a key design challenge and the development of a photovoltaic harvester has to be preceded by extensive simulations. We propose a detailed model of the solar cell that predicts the instantaneous power collected by the panel and improves the simulation of harvester systems. Furthermore, the paper focuses on a methodology for optimizing the design of MPPT solar harvesters for self-powered embedded systems and presents improvements in the circuit architecture with respect to our previous implementation. Experimental results show that the proposed design guidelines allow to increment global efficiency and to reduce the power consumption of the scavenger.     

An Energy Conservation MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices. Because of the limitation of battery power in the sensor nodes, energy conservation is a crucial issue in wireless sensor networks. Consequently, there is much literature presenting energy-efficient MAC protocols based on active/sleep duty cycle mechanisms to conserve energy. Convergecast is a common communication pattern across many sensor network applications featuring data gathering from many different source nodes to a single sink node. This leads to high data collision rates, high energy consumption, and low throughput near the sink node. This paper proposes an efficient slot reservation MAC protocol to reduce energy consumption and to make transmission more efficient in data gathering wireless sensor networks. The simulation results show that our protocol provides high throughput, low delivery latency and low energy consumption compared to other methods.

Range-Based Sleep Scheduling (RBSS) for Wireless Sensor Networks

Sleep scheduling in a wireless sensor network is the process of deciding which nodes are eligible to sleep (enter power-saving mode) after random deployment to conserve energy while retaining network coverage. Most existing approaches toward this problem require sensor’s location information, which may be impractical considering costly locating overheads. This paper proposes range-based sleep scheduling (RBSS) protocol which needs sensor-to-sensor distance but no location information. RBSS attempts to approach an optimal sensor selection pattern that demands the fewest working (awake) sensors. Simulation results indicate that RBSS is comparable to its location-based counterpart in terms of coverage quality and the reduction of working sensors.

Energy-accuracy trade-offs for hybrid localization using RSS and inertial measurements in wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a framework for optimizing the trade-off between energy consumption and localization accuracy in hybrid localization systems combining Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements with inertial ones. The proposed framework aims at finding the optimal operation point that minimizes the radio energy consumption for a desired target accuracy, or equivalently, the one that maximizes the localization accuracy for a given energy budget. To this end, the proposed approach considers the joint optimization of the localization frequency and number of RSS measurements used at each localization round and leverages practical models to predict the energy consumption and the localization accuracy for combined RSS-inertial localization systems. Simulations and real-field experiments are used to demonstrate that, for a given target accuracy, the proposed strategy entails a lower energy consumption than state-of-the-art methods available in the literature.     

Energy-efficiency clustering protocol in wireless sensor networks

The conventional clustering method has the unique potential to be the framework for power-conserving ad hoc networks. In this environment, studies on energy-efficient strategies such as sleeping mode and redirection have been reported, and recently some have even been adopted by some standards like Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11. However, consider wireless sensor networks. The devices employed are power-limited in nature, introducing the conventional clustering approach to the sensor networks provides a unique challenge due to the fact that cluster-heads, which are communication centers by default, tend to be heavily utilized and thus drained of their battery power rapidly. In this paper, we introduce a re-clustering strategy and a redirection scheme for cluster-based wireless sensor networks in order to address the power-conserving issues in such networks, while maintaining the merits of a clustering approach. Based on a practical energy model, simulation results show that the improved clustering method can obtain a longer lifetime when compared with the conventional clustering method.     

Distributed and Energy Efficient Self-Organization for On–Off Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we utilize clustering to achieve energy efficiency for the on–off wireless sensor network, whose member nodes alternate between active and inactive states. In the proposed Distributed and Energy Efficient Self Organization (DEESO) scheme, the head election is adjusted adaptively to the remaining battery levels of local active nodes, which is a completely distributed approach compared to LEACH that relying on other routing schemes to access global information. Furthermore, we apply the Adaptive Channel Assignment (ACA) to address the on-off topology changes. Simulation results show that DEESO delivers 184% amount of data to the base station as LEACH for the same amount of energy consumption and the effective network lifetime is extended by around 50%.     

Wireless underground sensor networks: Research challenges

This work introduces the concept of a Wireless Underground Sensor Network (WUSN). WUSNs can be used to monitor a variety of conditions, such as soil properties for agricultural applications and toxic substances for environmental monitoring. Unlike existing methods of monitoring underground conditions, which rely on buried sensors connected via wire to the surface, WUSN devices are deployed completely belowground and do not require any wired connections. Each device contains all necessary sensors, memory, a processor, a radio, an antenna, and a power source. This makes their deployment much simpler than existing underground sensing solutions. Wireless communication within a dense substance such as soil or rock is, however, significantly more challenging than through air. This factor, combined with the necessity to conserve energy due to the difficulty of unearthing and recharging WUSN devices, requires that communication protocols be redesigned to be as efficient as possible. This work provides an extensive overview of applications and design challenges for WUSNs, challenges for the underground communication channel including methods for predicting path losses in an underground link, and challenges at each layer of the communication protocol stack.