Rechargeable sensor activation under temporally correlated events

Wireless sensor networks are often deployed to detect “interesting events” that are bound to show some degree of temporal correlation across their occurrences. Typically, sensors are heavily constrained in terms of energy, and thus energy usage at the sensors must be optimized for efficient operation of the sensor system. A key optimization question in such systems is—how the sensor (assumed to be rechargeable) should be activated in time so that the number of interesting events detected is maximized under the typical slow rate of recharge of the sensor. In this article, we consider the activation question for a single sensor, and pose it in a stochastic decision framework. The recharge-discharge dynamics of a rechargeable sensor node, along with temporal correlations in the event occurrences makes the optimal sensor activation question very challenging. Under complete state observability, we outline a deterministic, memoryless policy that is provably optimal. For the more practical scenario, where the inactive sensor may not have complete information about the state of event occurrences in the system, we comment on the structure of the deterministic, history-dependent optimal policy. We then develop a simple, deterministic, memoryless activation policy based upon energy balance and show that this policy achieves near-optimal performance under certain realistic assumptions. Finally, we show that an aggressive activation policy, in which the sensor activates itself at every possible opportunity, performs optimally only if events are uncorrelated.

Near-optimal reinforcement learning framework for energy-aware sensor communications

We consider the problem of average throughput maximization per total consumed energy in packetized sensor communications. Our study results in a near-optimal transmission strategy that chooses the optimal modulation level and transmit power while adapting to the incoming traffic rate, buffer condition, and the channel condition. We investigate the point-to-point and multinode communication scenarios. Many solutions of the previous works require the state transition probability, which may be hard to obtain in a practical situation. Therefore, we are motivated to propose and utilize a class of learning algorithms [called reinforcement learning (RL)] to obtain the near-optimal policy in point-to-point communication and a good transmission strategy in multinode scenario. For comparison purpose, we develop the stochastic models to obtain the optimal strategy in the point-to-point communication. We show that the learned policy is close to the optimal policy. We further extend the algorithm to solve the optimization problem in a multinode scenario by independent learning. We compare the learned policy to a simple policy, where the agent chooses the highest possible modulation and selects the transmit power that achieves a predefined signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) given one particular modulation. The proposed learning algorithm achieves more than twice the throughput per energy compared with the simple policy, particularly, in high packet arrival regime. Beside the good performance, the RL algorithm results in a simple, systematic, self-organized, and distributed way to decide the transmission strategy.     

Design and analysis of asynchronous wakeup for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, scheduling the sleep duration of each node is one of the key elements for controlling critical performance metrics such as energy consumption and latency. Since the wakeup interval is a primary parameter for determining the sleeping schedule, how to tune the wakeup interval is crucial for the overall network performance. In this paper, we present an effective framework for tuning asynchronous wakeup intervals of IEEE 802.15.4 sensor networks from the energy consumption viewpoint. First, we derive an energy consumption model of each node as an explicit function of the wakeup interval, and empirically validate the derived model. Second, based on the proposed model, we formulate the problem of tuning the wakeup interval with the following two objectives: to minimize total energy consumption and to maximize network lifetime. We show that these two problems can be optimally solved by an iterative algorithm with global information by virtue of the convexity of the problem structure. Finally, as practical solutions, we further propose heuristic optimization algorithms that only exploit local information. In order to develop heuristic algorithms, we propose two broadcasting schemes, which are entitled as maximum wakeup interval broadcasting and efficient local maximum broadcasting. These broadcasting algorithms enable nodes in the network to have heterogeneous wakeup intervals.     

Scheduling algorithms for extending directional sensor network lifetime

Recently, directional sensor networks that are composed of a large number of directional sensors have attracted a great deal of attention. The main issues associated with the directional sensors are limited battery power and restricted sensing angle. Therefore, monitoring all the targets in a given area and, at the same time, maximizing the network lifetime has remained a challenge. As sensors are often densely deployed, a promising approach to conserve the energy of directional sensors is developing efficient scheduling algorithms. These algorithms partition the sensor directions into multiple cover sets each of which is able to monitor all the targets. The problem of constructing the maximum number of cover sets has been modeled as the multiple directional cover sets (MDCS), which has been proved to be an NP-complete problem. In this study, we design two new scheduling algorithms, a greedy-based algorithm and a learning automata (LA)-based algorithm, in order to solve the MDCS problem. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms, several experiments were conducted. The obtained results demonstrated the efficiency of both algorithms in terms of extending the network lifetime. Simulation results also revealed that the LA-based algorithm was more successful compared to the greedy-based one in terms of prolonging network lifetime.     

基于QoS的无线传感器网络感知调度协议

针对大规模随机部署传感器网络的节点密度不均匀性和不同应用对事件监测时延的不同需求,为提供全网可调的监测时延保障,设计了面向事件监测应用的全网能耗均衡的自适应分布式感知调度协议(ADSSP),仿真结果表明:相对于随机感知调度协议,ADSSP能获得更低的平均监测时延,在满足相同的平均监测延迟的前提下延长了30%的网络生存时间.     

Effective sensor deployment based on field information coverage in precision agriculture

Coverage is an importance issue in wireless sensor networks. In this work, we first propose a novel notion of information coverage, which refers to the coverage efficiency of field information covered by deployed sensor nodes. On the basis of information coverage, we consider an optimization problem of how to partition the given field into multiple parcels and to deploy sensor nodes in some selected parcels such that the field information covered by the deployed sensor nodes meets the requirement. First, we develop two effective polynomial‐time algorithms to determine the deployed locations of source nodes for information 1‐coverage and q‐coverage of the field, respectively, without consideration of communication, where information q‐coverage implies that the field information in terms of information point is covered by at least q source nodes. Also, we prove the upper bound in the theoretical for the approximate solution derived by our proposed method. Second, another polynomial‐time algorithm is presented for deriving the deployed locations of relay nodes. In the theoretical, this proposed algorithm can achieve the minimized number of relay nodes. Further, the related information 1‐coverage algorithms are applied in our wireless sensor network‐based automatic irrigation project in precision agriculture. Experimental results show the major trade‐offs of impact factors in sensor deployment and significant performance improvements achieved by our proposed method. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy‐constrained mobile sensor with motion plans for monitoring stochastic events

With the development of robotics and embedded system, utilizing mobile sensors to capture stochastic events is emerging as a promising method to monitor a region of interest (RoI). In previous work, the quality of monitoring (QoM) is evaluated based on the stochastic events capture without taking the energy of motion into consideration. Since sensor nodes are normally constrained by limited energy capability, it is desirable to guide the mobile sensor in an energy‐efficient motion to capture events information. In this paper, by analyzing the different kinds of surveillance that may result in different required QoM, we obtain the expected Information captured Per unit of Energy consumption (IPE), which is a function with multiple parameters including the event type, the event dynamics, and the velocity of the mobile sensor. Our analysis is based on a realistic energy model of motion, and can achieve suboptimal motion plans by adopting existing typical approximation algorithm, and thus enable the sensor velocity to be optimized for capturing stochastic events information. We propose approximation algorithms to enable the tradeoff between the computation and efficiency, which make motion plans more practical in some realistic scenarios. The efficiency and effectiveness of proposed algorithm are validated by the extensive simulations. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Connected sensor cover: self-organization of sensor networks for efficient query execution

Spatial query execution is an essential functionality of a sensor network, where a query gathers sensor data within a specific geographic region. Redundancy within a sensor network can be exploited to reduce the communication cost incurred in execution of such queries. Any reduction in communication cost would result in an efficient use of the battery energy, which is very limited in sensors. One approach to reduce the communication cost of a query is to self-organize the network, in response to a query, into a topology that involves only a small subset of the sensors sufficient to process the query. The query is then executed using only the sensors in the constructed topology. The self-organization technique is beneficial for queries that run sufficiently long to amortize the communication cost incurred in self-organization. In this paper, we design and analyze algorithms for suchself-organization of a sensor network to reduce energy consumption. In particular, we develop the notion of a connected sensor cover and design a centralized approximation algorithm that constructs a topology involving a near-optimal connected sensor cover. We prove that the size of the constructed topology is within an O(logn) factor of the optimal size, where n is the network size. We develop a distributed self-organization version of the approximation algorithm, and propose several optimizations to reduce the communication overhead of the algorithm. We also design another distributed algorithm based on node priorities that has a further lower communication overhead, but does not provide any guarantee on the size of the connected sensor cover constructed. Finally, we evaluate the distributed algorithms using simulations and show that our approaches results in significant communication cost reductions.     

A myopic mobile sink migration strategy for maximizing lifetime of wireless sensor networks

Network lifetime maximization is challenging particularly for large-scale wireless sensor networks. The sensor nodes near the sink node tend to suffer high energy consumption due to heavy traffic relay operations, becoming vulnerable to energy depletion. The rationale of the sink mobility approach is that as the sink node moves around, such risk of energy depletion at some nodes can be alleviated. In this paper, we first obtain the optimal mobile sink sojourning pattern by solving a linear programming model and then we mathematically analyze why the optimal solution exhibits such sojourning pattern. We use the insights from this analysis to design a simple practical heuristic algorithm for sink mobility, which utilizes only local information. Our heuristic is very different from the existing algorithms which often use the traffic volume as the main decision factor, in that we consider the variance of residual energy of neighboring sensor nodes. The simulation results show that our scheme achieves near-optimal network lifetime even with the relatively low moving speed of the mobile sink.     

Relocation routing for energy balancing in mobile sensor networks

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

A Best Fit Relocation Approach for Heterogeneous Sensor Networks

The heterogeneity of sensing devices has to be taken into account for increasing the network performance and lifetime. This paper presents a study for the sensor relocation problem based on the heterogeneity point of view. A novel approach named Best Fit Relocation Approach, BFRA, is proposed for heterogeneous sensors in order to maximize the coverage of the monitored field and guarantee the connectivity of the deployed sensors. This approach proposes new computational geometry algorithms with perfect complexity to be exploited in small and large-scale sensor networks. A simulation tool is proposed to perform a set of experiments to evaluate the proposed algorithms for different sensor characteristics taking into consideration the curly of field boundaries and the presence of obstacles. Simulation results show that near-optimal coverage performance could be achieved in much less both running time and average moving distance.     

Study of an adaptive frame size predictor to enhance energy conservation in wireless sensor networks

Technological advances in low-power digital signal processors, radio frequency (RF) circuits, and micromechanical systems (MEMS) have led to the emergence of wirelessly interconnected sensor nodes. The new technological possibilities emerge when a large number of tiny intelligent wireless sensor nodes are combined. The sensor nodes are typically battery operated and, therefore, energy constrained. Hence, energy conservation is one of the foremost priorities in design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) protocols. Limited power resources and bursty nature of the wireless channel are the biggest challenges in WSNs. Link adaptation techniques improve the link quality by adjusting medium access control (MAC) parameters such as frame size, data rate, and sleep time, thereby improving energy efficiency. In This work, our study emphasizes optimizing WSNs by building a reliable and adaptive MAC without compromising fairness and performance. Here, we present link adaptation techniques at MAC layer to enhance energy efficiency of the sensor nodes. The proposed MAC uses a variable frame size instead of a fixed frame size for transmitting data. In order to get accurate estimations, as well as reducing the computation complexity, we utilize the extended Kalman filter to predict the optimal frame size for improving energy efficiency and goodput, while minimizing the sensor memory requirement. Next, we designed and verified different network models to evaluate and analyze the proposed link adaptation schemes. The correctness of the proposed theoretical models have been verified by conducting extensive simulations. We also prototype the proposed scheme with the MAC protocol on Berkeley Motes. Both prototype and simulation results show that the proposed algorithms improve the energy efficiency by up to 15%.     

An ant colony optimization based routing algorithm for extending network lifetime in wireless sensor networks

Reducing the energy consumption of network nodes is one of the most important problems for routing in wireless sensor networks because of the battery limitation in each sensor. This paper presents a new ant colony optimization based routing algorithm that uses special parameters in its competency function for reducing energy consumption of network nodes. In this new proposed algorithm called life time aware routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks (LTAWSN), a new pheromone update operator was designed to integrate energy consumption and hops into routing choice. Finally, with the results of the multiple simulations we were able to show that LTAWSN, in comparison with the previous ant colony based routing algorithm, energy aware ant colony routing algorithms for the routing of wireless sensor networks, ant colony optimization-based location-aware routing algorithm for wireless sensor networks and traditional ant colony algorithm, increase the efficiency of the system, obtains more balanced transmission among the nodes and reduce the energy consumption of the routing and extends the network lifetime.     

An approach for near-optimal distributed data fusion in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a lot of sensory traffic with redundancy is produced due to massive node density and their diverse placement. This causes the decline of scarce network resources such as bandwidth and energy, thus decreasing the lifetime of sensor network. Recently, the mobile agent (MA) paradigm has been proposed as a solution to overcome these problems. The MA approach accounts for performing data processing and making data aggregation decisions at nodes rather than bring data back to a central processor (sink). Using this approach, redundant sensory data is eliminated. In this article, we consider the problem of calculating near-optimal routes for MAs that incrementally fuse the data as they visit the nodes in a WSN. The order of visited nodes (the agent’s itinerary) affects not only the quality but also the overall cost of data fusion. Our proposed heuristic algorithm adapts methods usually applied in network design problems in the specific requirements of sensor networks. It computes an approximate solution to the problem by suggesting an appropriate number of MAs that minimizes the overall data fusion cost and constructs near-optimal itineraries for each of them. The performance gain of our algorithm over alternative approaches both in terms of cost and task completion latency is demonstrated by a quantitative evaluation and also in simulated environments through a Java-based tool.     

Charging utility maximization in wireless rechargeable sensor networks

Wireless energy transfer as a promising technology provides an alternative solution to prolong the lifetime of wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs). In this paper, we study replenishing energy on sensors in a WRSN to shorten energy expiration durations of sensors, by employing a mobile wireless charger to replenish sensors dynamically. We first formulate a novel sensor recharging problem with an objective of maximizing the charging utility of sensors, subject to the total traveling distance of the mobile charger per tour and the charging time window of each to-be-charged sensor. Due to the NP-hardness of the problem, we then propose an approximation algorithm with quasi-polynomial time complexity. In spite of the guaranteed performance ratio of the approximate solution, its time complexity is prohibitively high and may not be feasible in practice. Instead, we devise a fast yet scalable heuristic for the problem in response to dynamic energy consumption of sensors in the network. Furthermore, we also consider the online version of the problem where sensor replenishment is scheduled at every fixed time interval. We finally conduct extensive experiments by simulation to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms are very promising.     

Delay aware reliable transport in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are event‐based systems that rely on the collective effort of several sensor nodes. Reliable event detection at the sink is based on collective information provided by the sensor nodes and not on any individual sensor data. Hence, conventional end‐to‐end reliability definitions and solutions are inapplicable in the WSN regime and would only lead to a waste of scarce sensor resources. Moreover, the reliability objective of WSN must be achieved within a certain real‐time delay bound posed by the application. Therefore, the WSN paradigm necessitates a collective delay‐constrained event‐to‐sink reliability notion rather than the traditional end‐to‐end reliability approaches. To the best of our knowledge, there is no transport protocol solution which addresses both reliability and real‐time delay bound requirements of WSN simultaneously. In this paper, the delay aware reliable transport (DART) protocol is presented for WSN. The objective of the DART protocol is to timely and reliably transport event features from the sensor field to the sink with minimum energy consumption. In this regard, the DART protocol simultaneously addresses congestion control and timely event transport reliability objectives in WSN. In addition to its efficient congestion detection and control algorithms, it incorporates the time critical event first (TCEF) scheduling mechanism to meet the application‐specific delay bounds at the sink node. Importantly, the algorithms of the DART protocol mainly run on resource rich sink node, with minimal functionality required at resource constrained sensor nodes. Furthermore, the DART protocol can accommodate multiple concurrent event occurrences in a wireless sensor field. Performance evaluation via simulation experiments show that the DART protocol achieves high performance in terms of real‐time communication requirements, reliable event detection and energy consumption in WSN. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Weighted relay node placement for wireless sensor network connectivity

In wireless sensor networks (WSN), which are composed of unreliable sensor nodes, preserving the connectivity is a serious problem and one of the most effective solutions of this problem is to deploy powerful relay nodes (RN). The location of the RN is an important parameter for the network performance. In this paper, we investigate relay node placement (RNP) problem on a weighted terrain structure to satisfy WSN connectivity. Contrary to the existing studies, instead of minimizing the number of RN, the main objective of weighted RNP is to minimize the total weight of the points on which RN are deployed. In order to solve the weighted RNP problem, a mathematical formulation is proposed to find the optimal solution. However, because of the NP-complete nature of the problem, a polynomial time heuristic algorithm is also developed. Performance results show that the proposed heuristic algorithm can find near-optimal solutions in a reasonable time bound.     

面向混合业务的无线传感器网络能量有效接入策略

研究了在实时业务和非实时业务同时存在的混合背景下,非实时业务的无线传感器节点自适应侦听和睡眠的动态接入机制。网络节点处于睡眠状态时所需的能量很低,节约了无线传感器网络节点的平均能量消耗;但是,过长的睡眠时间可能使得网络节点错失传输机会。因此,根据信道的使用情况,合理地设定无线传感器网络节点的睡眠时间,能够在网络能量消耗和传输效率之间进行调整,从而最大化无线传感器网络的能量传输效率。首先,利用连续时间 Markov 方法对问题进行建模,并利用基于摄动分析理论对系统模型进行分析,获得求解无线传感器网络能量效率最大化的最优睡眠时间梯度算法。最后通过理论结果和计算机仿真模拟的对比,验证了推荐方法的可行性。     

联合信号子空间和功率分配的认知干扰对齐传输方案设计

本文针对由一条授权通信链路和多条次用户干扰信道组成的认知多输入多输出（Multiple Input Multiple Output,MIMO）系统,首先提出了基于信号子空间的认知干扰对齐迭代优化算法,并且利用单调有界理论证明了该算法可以收敛到稳定点。为了进一步提升系统的和速率性能,提出了一种联合信号子空间和功率分配的增强认知干扰对齐算法。该算法通过在每个次用户的多个数据流之间进行自适应功率分配,解决了次用户的有用信号空间中总是有残余的干扰信号的问题。数值仿真结果表明,相对于传统的认知干扰对齐算法,所提的算法能够获得较为明显的性能提升。      

Cross layer design in multi-hop networks with adaptive modulation along with constellation rearrangement

Distributed nature of wireless sensor network raises a number of design challenges, especially when energy-efficiency and Quality of Service requirements are to be taken into consideration. These challenges can only be met by allowing closer cooperation and mutual adaptation between the protocol layers, referred to as a cross-layer design paradigm. In this paper, we explain the operating stages for adaptive sleep with adaptive modulation based on the MAC layer protocol. By using adaptive sleep with adaptive modulation the total time for completing one packet is adaptively reduced. Therefore, not only the transmission time is adapted by adaptive modulation, but also the sleep time is varied by adaptive sleep. A cross-layer, optimization scheme, based on adaptive sleep with adaptive modulation along with constellation rearrangement and power control, is proposed in this paper for minimizing energy cost and enhancing the network longevity. The adaptive sleep with adaptive modulation along with constellation rearrangement algorithm changes the modulation scheme dynamically by using constellation rearrangement while adjusting the node sleep periods and power levels. The paper considers several variations of these schemes and analyzes and compares their performance under various traffic intensity based on extensive computer simulations. Finally the proposed scheme is evaluated through NS2 simulations in terms of throughput.