Handling Mobility in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

In Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSANs), the collaborative operation of sensors enables the distributed sensing of a physical phenomenon, while actors collect and process sensor data and perform appropriate actions. WSANs can be thought of as a distributed control system that needs to timely react to sensor information with an effective action. In this paper, coordination and communication problems in WSANs with mobile actors are studied. First, a new location management scheme is proposed to handle the mobility of actors with minimal energy expenditure for the sensors, based on a hybrid strategy that includes location updating and location prediction. Actors broadcast location updates limiting their scope based on Voronoi diagrams, while sensors predict the movement of actors based on Kalman filtering of previously received updates. The location management scheme enables efficient geographical routing, and based on this, an optimal energy-aware forwarding rule is derived for sensor-actor communication. Consequently, algorithms are proposed that allow controlling the delay of the data-delivery process based on power control, and deal with network congestion by forcing multiple actors to be recipients for traffic generated in the event area. Finally, a model is proposed to optimally assign tasks to actors and control their motion in a coordinated way to accomplish the tasks based on the characteristics of the events. Performance evaluation shows the effectiveness of the proposed solution.     

WSANs中基于跳步数自适应的路由算法

无线传感反应网络是由大量传感节点和少量（可移动）资源丰富的反应节点构成.传感节点 负责收集外部环境信息,而反应节点对外部环境实施相应的操作.本文分析节点能量消耗模 型,求解出理想条件下单条路径上总能耗最小时的最优跳步数.在此基础上,提出了一种跳 步数自适应的路由算法HAR,用来实现数据收集的实时需求与能量消耗之间的平衡.仿真实验 表明：HAR算法在平衡能量消耗与时间延迟的性能上优于HBMECT算法,而且能较好地适用于 反应节点移动的情形.     

Adaptive Pull�CPush Based Event Tracking in Wireless Sensor Actor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have attracted significant interest for various scientific, military, and e-health applications. Recently a new class of sensor networks ??sensor/actor networks?? has been introducing new research challenges due to the unique coordination requirements among sensors and actors. In sensor/actor networks, actors are the nodes that have the capability to move in the field, equipped with powerful devices and can respond to the events of interest. With this capability, autonomous operation of the network is possible without a centralized controlling mechanism. This, however, requires the network to apply cooperative mechanism to decide when and how monitoring is done to track the event and how the event will be responded. In this regard, little work has been done in terms of co-existing Push and Pull data flows in the network. In this paper, we propose an Adaptive Pull?CPush (APP) based Event Tracking approach that allows sensor-to-actor communication as well as actors coordination in response to the events occurred. APP proposes two models of sensors organization: region-based organization (RAPP) and neighbor-based organization (NAPP) to alert nodes in the vicinity of reported event. APP exploits the mobility of actor nodes to form dynamic responsibility clusters, thus ensuring an event specific response to emergencies. Routing in APP is based on Routing by Adaptive Targeting (RAT), which is a delay-constrained geographical routing protocol. Simulation results reveal significant performance improvement in terms of response time and energy conservation.     

A Real-Time and Reliable Transport (RT)$^{2}$ Protocol for Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are characterized by the collective effort of heterogeneous nodes called sensors and actors. Sensor nodes collect information about the physical world, while actor nodes take action decisions and perform appropriate actions upon the environment. The collaborative operation of sensors and actors brings significant advantages over traditional sensing, including improved accuracy, larger coverage area and timely actions upon the sensed phenomena. However, to realize these potential gains, there is a need for an efficient transport layer protocol that can address the unique communication challenges introduced by the coexistence of sensors and actors. In this paper, a real-time and reliable transport (RT) protocol is presented for WSANs. The objective of the (RT) protocol is to reliably and collaboratively transport event features from the sensor field to the actor nodes with minimum energy dissipation and to timely react to sensor information with a right action. In this respect, the (RT) protocol simultaneously addresses congestion control and timely event transport reliability objectives in WSANs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research effort focusing on real-time and reliable transport protocol for WSANs. Performance evaluations via simulation experiments show that the (RT) protocol achieves high performance in terms of reliable event detection, communication latency and energy consumption in WSANs.     

Wireless sensor and actor networks: research challenges

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) refer to a group of sensors and actors linked by wireless medium to perform distributed sensing and acting tasks. The realization of wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) needs to satisfy the requirements introduced by the coexistence of sensors and actors. In WSANs, sensors gather information about the physical world, while actors take decisions and then perform appropriate actions upon the environment, which allows a user to effectively sense and act from a distance. In order to provide effective sensing and acting, coordination mechanisms are required among sensors and actors. Moreover, to perform right and timely actions, sensor data must be valid at the time of acting. This paper explores sensor-actor and actor-actor coordination and describes research challenges for coordination and communication problems.     

Timing-Based Mobile Sensor Localization in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

In this paper, localization problem in wireless sensor and actor networks (WSAN) is addressed. In WSAN, the performance of event detection and tracking highly depends on the exact location information of the events that must be reported along with the event features. Having precise location information of the sensor nodes, actors are able to execute actions more effectively in the region of detected events. In this context, the accurate localization of sensor nodes is essential with respect to the actors. Particularly, the problem becomes much more complicated when the sensor nodes as well as the anchor nodes (actors) are mobile. In order to localize the mobile sensor nodes relative to the actors, a novel Timing-based Mobile Sensor Localization (TMSL) algorithm is introduced. In TMSL, sensor nodes determine their distance from actors by using propagation time and speed of RF signal. In order to determine distance from the actors, actors actively broadcast reference beacons in a pattern of intervals adaptively defined according to the mobility of sensor nodes and the required level of localization accuracy. These reference beacons carry the interval numbers in which they were transmitted. The interval numbers are then used by the sensor nodes to calculate the start time of the beacons locally which is then used to determine the propagation time. TMSL does neither require nor assume any time synchronization among the sensor nodes or with the actors. Performance evaluations clearly show that TMSL is adaptive to velocity of mobile sensor and actor nodes and can be configured according to the required localization accuracy in order to avoid overhead raised due to high velocity.     

Detecting and connecting disjoint sub-networks in wireless sensor and actor networks

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) can be considered as a combination of a sensor network and an actor network in which powerful and mobile actor nodes can perform application specific actions based on the received data from the sensors. As most of these actions are performed collaboratively among the actors, inter-actor connectivity is one of the desirable features of WSANs. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed algorithm for establishing a connected inter-actor network topology. Considering initially disjoint sets of actors, our algorithm first initiates a search process by using the underlying sensor network in order to detect the possible sub-networks of actors in the region. After these sub-networks are detected, our algorithm pursues a coordinated actor movement in order to connect the sub-networks and thus achieve inter-actor connectivity for all the actors. This coordinated movement approach exploits the minimum connected dominating set of each sub-network when picking the appropriate actor to move so that the connectivity of each sub-network is not violated. In addition, the approach strives to minimize the total travel distance of actors and the messaging cost on both sensors and actors in order to extend the lifetime of WSAN. We analytically study the performance of our algorithm. Extensive simulation experiments validate the analytical results and confirm the effectiveness of our approach.     

A delay and energy aware coordination mechanism for WSAN

In this paper, a delay and energy aware coordination mechanism (DEACM) has been devised for wireless sensor–actor networks. In DEACM, a two‐level hierarchical K‐hop clustering mechanism is used to organize the sensors and actors for communication. In the first level, sensors form a K‐hop cluster using actors as cluster heads, and sink is made as the cluster head in the second level to form a cluster among actors. Sensor nodes, which are 1‐hop away from the actors, also called as relay nodes are elected as backup cluster head (BCH) based on the residual energy and node degree. BCH collects the data from sensors when an actor is away to perform actions in the affected area. The scheme is evaluated through exhaustive simulation in NS2 along with other existing schemes. Different parameters like average event waiting time, event reliability, and average energy dissipation are compared, varying the number of sensors, actors, and data transfer rate. In general, it is observed that the proposed DEACM outperforms other existing schemes. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

事件驱动的带执行器无线传感器网络分簇算法研究

带有执行器的无线传感器网络是指在传统无线传感器网络中加入执行节点,形成传感器节点、执行节点和基站共同构成的三层监控网络。根据执行器在能量、计算能力和感知能力方面的优势,提出建立应用于事件调度的双环分簇算法。算法将执行器连接成双环结构,提升网络在线扩展能力的同时,也为无线传感器网络满足事件驱动构建基础。仿真实验证明,此算法能够有效降低网络能耗,随着节点数目的增加和监控领域的扩大,表现更加凸出。     

Greedy algorithms for actor redeployment in wireless sensor–actor networks

In a wireless sensor–actor network, an actor usually has to provide services as soon as the actor receives the event signals from the sensors. Therefore, the performance of a wireless sensor–actor network depends on the actor deployment. In many circumstances, actors may fail or go out to deal with events, and thus, the sensors covered by the missing actors could be not to be reachable in time. This introduces the necessity of actor redeployment. In this paper, we study the problems of redeploying actors to maximize the number of sensors able to be covered by actors and to maximize the decrease of the residual distances of sensors, respectively. Both problems are shown to be NP-complete. Additionally, we prove that the greedy algorithm for each problem has an approximation ratio of 2. Simulations show that the greedy algorithm for each problem performs well.     

Communication and Coordination in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

In this paper, coordination and communication problems in wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are jointly addressed in a unifying framework. A sensor-actor coordination model is proposed based on an event-driven partitioning paradigm. Sensors are partitioned into different sets, and each set is constituted by a data-delivery tree associated with a different actor. The optimal solution for the partitioning strategy is determined by mathematical programming, and a distributed solution is proposed. In addition, a new model for the actor-actor coordination problem is introduced. The actor coordination is formulated as a task assignment optimization problem for a class of coordination problems in which the area to be acted upon needs to be optimally split among different actors. An auction-based distributed solution of the problem is also presented. Performance evaluation shows how global network objectives, such as compliance with real-time constraints and minimum energy consumption, can be achieved in the proposed framework with simple interactions between sensors and actors that are suitable for large-scale networks of energy-constrained devices.     

Scate: A Scalable Time and Energy Aware Actor Task Allocation Algorithm in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

In many applications of wireless sensor actor networks (WSANs) that often run in harsh environments, the reduction of completion times of tasks is highly desired. We present a new time‐aware, energy‐aware, and starvation‐free algorithm called Scate for assigning tasks to actors while satisfying the scalability and distribution requirements of WSANs with semi‐automated architecture. The proposed algorithm allows concurrent executions of any mix of small and large tasks and yet prevents probable starvation of tasks. To achieve this, it estimates the completion times of tasks on each available actor and then takes the remaining energies and the current workloads of these actors into account during task assignment to actors. The results of our experiments with a prototyped implementation of Scate show longer network lifetime, shorter makespan of resulting schedules, and more balanced loads on actors compared to when one of the three well‐known task‐scheduling algorithms, namely, the max‐min, min‐min, and opportunistic load balancing algorithms, is used.     

Path scheduling for multiple mobile actors in wireless sensor network

In wireless sensor network (WSN), energy is the main constraint. In this work we have addressed this issue for single as well as multiple mobile sensor actor network. In this work, we have proposed Rendezvous Point Selection Scheme (RPSS) in which Rendezvous Nodes are selected by set covering problem approach and from that, Rendezvous Points are selected in a way to reduce the tour length. The mobile actors tour is scheduled to pass through those Rendezvous Points as per Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP). We have also proposed novel rendezvous node rotation scheme for fair utilisation of all the nodes. We have compared RPSS with Stationery Actor scheme as well as RD-VT, RD-VT-SMT and WRP-SMT for performance metrics like energy consumption, network lifetime, route length and found the better outcome in all the cases for single actor. We have also applied RPSS for multiple mobile actor case like Multi-Actor Single Depot (MASD) termination and Multi-Actor Multiple Depot (MAMD) termination and observed by extensive simulation that MAMD saves the network energy in optimised way and enhance network lifetime compared to all other schemes.     

Network Partitioning Recovery Mechanisms in WSANs: a Survey

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) are more promising and most addressing research field in the area of wireless sensor networks in recent scenario. It composed of possibly a large number of tiny, autonomous sensor devices and resources rich actor nodes equipped with wireless communication and computation capabilities. Actors collect sensors’ information and respond collaboratively to achieve an application specific mission. Since actors have to coordinate their operation, a strongly connected inter-actor network would be required at all the time in the network. Actor nodes may fail for many reasons (i.e. due of battery exhaustion or hardware failure due to hash environment etc.) and failures may convert connected network into disjoint networks. This can hinder sometimes not only the performance of network but also degrade the usefulness and effectiveness of the network. Thus, having a partitioning detection and connectivity restoration procedure at the time of failure occurs in the network is crucial for WSANs. In this paper, we review the present network partitioning recovery approaches and provide an overall view of this study by summarizing previous achievements.     

Self-Organizing Mobility Control in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks Based on Virtual Electrostatic Interactions

This paper introduces a new mobility control method for surveillance applications of wireless sensor and actor networks. The proposed method is based on virtual electrostatic forces which act on actors to coordinate their movements. The definition of virtual forces is inspired by Coulomb’s law from physics. Each actor calculates the virtual forces independently based on known locations of its neighbours and predetermined borders of the monitored area. The virtual forces generate movements of actors. This approach enables effective deployment of actors at the initial stage as well as adaptation of actors’ placement to variable conditions during execution of the surveillance task without the need of any central controller. Effectiveness of the introduced method was experimentally evaluated in a simulation environment. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method enables more effective organization of the actors’ mobility than state-of-the-art approaches.     

Actor-oriented directional anycast routing in wireless sensor and actor networks with smart antennas

Current routing protocols in wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) shows a lack of unification for different traffic patterns because the communication for sensor to actor and that for actor to actor are designed separately. Such a design poses a challenge for interoperability between sensors and actors. With the presence of rich-resource actor nodes, we argue that to improve network lifetime, the problem transforms from reducing overall network energy consumption to reducing energy consumption of constrained sensor nodes. To reduce energy consumption of sensor nodes, especially in challenging environments with coverage holes/obstacles, we propose that actor nodes should share forwarding tasks with sensor nodes. To enable such a feature, efficient interoperability between sensors and actors is required, and thus a unified routing protocol for both sensors and actors is needed. This paper explores capabilities of directional transmission with smart antennas and rich-resource actors to design a novel unified actor-oriented directional anycast routing protocol (ADA) which supports arbitrary traffic in WSANs. The proposed routing protocol exploits actors as main routing anchors as much as possible because they have better energy and computing power compared to constraint sensor nodes. In addition, a directional anycast routing approach is also proposed to further reduce total delay and energy consumption of overall network. Through extensive experiments, we show that ADA outperforms state-of-the-art protocols in terms of packet delivery latency, network lifetime, and packet reliability. In addition, by offer fault tolerant features, ADA also performs well in challenging environments where coverage holes and obstacles are of concerns.     

Dynamic Data-Centric Storage for long-term storage in Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks

Data-Centric Storage (DCS) appears as a novel information storage and delivery mechanism for Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks in which a rendezvous node (home node) is selected to store and serve all the information of a particular application. However, DCS was not designed to provide long-term data availability. In this paper we present a Dynamic DCS solution to enable a long-term storage system. Dynamic DCS proposes to periodically change home nodes over the time based on periods of fixed duration called epochs. This makes it possible to perform temporal queries to previous home nodes in order to retrieve information from the past. We evaluate our proposal using extensive simulations, and reveal that Dynamic DCS makes sensor events available at least 85 % of the maximum lifetime provided by an optimal (but non practical) solution. Finally, we show that Dynamic DCS could easily adapt its storage performance to the requirements of an application by just tuning the epoch duration.     

The CBP Parameter: A Module Characterization Approach for DSP Software Optimization

Memory consumption is an important metric for DSP software implementation. In this paper, we develop a module characterization technique that promotes more economical use of memory resources at the system level. Our work is developed in the context of software synthesis from signal/video/image processing applications expressed as synchronous dataflow (SDF) graphs. SDF is a restricted form of dataflow where each computational module (actor) consumes and produces a fixed number of data values (tokens) on each execution. Usually, no assumption is made about when during the execution of an actor, the tokens are actually consumed and produced; the firing of an actor is treated as an atomic event for most purposes. However, we show in this paper that it is possible to concisely and precisely capture key properties pertaining to the relative times at which tokens are produced and consumed by an actor. We show this by introducing the consumed-before-produced (CBP) parameter, which provides a general method for characterizing the token transfer of an SDF actor. Good bounds on the CBP parameter can aid an SDF compiler in performing more aggressive optimizations for reducing buffer sizes on the edges between actors. We formally define the CBP parameter; derive some useful properties of this parameter; illustrate how the value of the parameter is derived by examining in detail the multirate FIR filter, which is a fundamental actor in multirate signal processing applications; and examine CBP parameterizations for several other practical SDF actors.     

A scalable and energy‐efficient MAC protocol for sensor and actor networks

A scalable energy‐efficient MAC protocol is proposed for wireless sensor and actor networks (WSAN) to improve the network performance. Actor's placement has computed using midpoint K‐mean technique. These actors perform as the cluster heads and collect the information from its members. Cluster head computes the shortest path to all of its cluster members. Further, it divides the cluster into multiple subtrees and assigns a noninterference channel to every subtree. A token is assigned to each subtree for intracluster communication. Token handling and token processing mechanisms are proposed to transfer token from one node to next eligible node. Finally, a throughput‐based channel selection mechanism has proposed for actor‐actor communication. The proposed protocol is simulated in NS2 and compared with its competitive MAC protocols. The results describe that the existing protocols are out beaten by the proposed mechanism.     

Geographical routing and participant collaboration model based communication mechanism of WSAN

The communication mechanism of wireless sensor and actor network (WSAN) was studied.Firstly,a proactive location management mechanism based on the update messages sent by mobile actors to sensors and the actors’ scope limited by Voronoi diagram was proposed.Thus,sensors predicted the movement of actors using Kalman filtering of the previously received updates.Then,an optimal energy-aware forwarding rule based on geographical routing was presented for sensor-actor communication,and the delay of the data delivery process was controlled using the power control and the network congestion was dealed with by forcing multiple actors to share the traffic generated in the event area.Finally,based on the characteristics of multiple concurrent events,a model for actor-actor coordination was proposed to coordinate their movements in order to optimally accomplish the tasks.Performance simulation results show that the proposed cooperative communication mechanism for WSAN can effectively reduce end-to-end delays,energy consumption and percentage of packet drops.