Energy Saving and Scavenging in Stand-alone and Large Scale Distributed Systems.

This thesis focuses on energy management techniques for distributed systems such as hand-held mobile devices, sensor nodes, and data center servers. One of the major design problems in multiple application domains is the mismatch between workloads and resources. Sub-optimal assignment of workloads to resources can cause underloaded or overloaded resources, resulting in performance degradation or energy waste. This work specifically focuses on the heterogeneity in system hardware components and workloads. It includes energy management solutions for unregulated or batteryless embedded systems; and data center servers with heterogeneous workloads, machines, and processor wear states. This thesis describes four major contributions: (1) This thesis describes a battery test and energy delivery system design process to maintain battery life in embedded systems without voltage regulators. (2) In battery-less sensor nodes, this thesis demonstrates a routing protocol to maintain reliable transmission through the sensor network. (3) This thesis has characterized typical workloads and developed two models to capture the heterogeneity of data center tasks and machines: a task performance model and a machine resource utilization model. These models allow users to predict task finish time on individual machines. It then integrates these two models into a task scheduler based on the Hadoop framework for MapReduce tasks, and uses this scheduler for server energy minimization using task concentration. (4) In addition to saving server energy consumption, this thesis describes a method of reducing data center cooling energy by maintaining optimal server processor temperature setpoints through a task assignment algorithm. This algorithm considers the reliability impact of processor wear states. It records processor wear states through automatic timing slack tests on a cluster of machines with varying core temperatures, voltages, and frequencies. These optimal temperature setpoints are used in a task scheduling algorithm that saves both server and cooling energy.PhDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/116746/1/xjhe_1.pd

Electronic system modelling of UT pulser-receiver and the electron beam welding power source

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Engineering and awarded by Brunel University.Continuous improvements to industrial equipment used in essential industrial applications are a key for the commercial success to the equipment manufacturers. Industrial applications always demand optimum performance and reliability and almost all equipment used in industrial applications is complex and are very expensive to replace. Often modifications to hardware and retrofitting additional hardware are encouraged by most equipment manufacturers and operators. The complexity of these systems however, makes assessment of modifications and design change difficult. This research implemented system modelling techniques to overcome this issue, by developing virtual test platforms of two distinctive industrial systems for enhancement assessment. The two distinctive systems were the electronic equipment called pulser-receiver used in ultrasonic non-destructive testing of safety critical oil & gas pipelines and a high voltage power supply used in high energy electron beam welding. Optimisation with emphasis on portability of the pulser-receiver and rapid weld recovery after a flashover fault condition in the electron beam welding application required assessment before design changes were made to hardware. SPICE based simulators LTSpice and PSpice were used to model and simulate the pulser-receiver and the welding power supply respectively. All the models were evaluated appropriately against theoretical data and published datasheets. However, validation of low level component models developed in the research against measurement data at a component level suffered due to system complexity and resource constraints. Close mapping of simulation results to measurement data at a system level were obtained. The research helped build up a wealth of knowledge in the development of circuit simulation models that can be analysed in the time domain with no non-convergent issues. Simulation settings were relaxed without compromising accuracy of model performance.The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Board (EPSRC) and TWI Ltd

Distributed Self Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks using Statistical Methods

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in various real life applications where the sensor nodes are randomly deployed in hostile, human inaccessible and adversarial environments. One major research focus in wireless sensor networks in the past decades has been to diagnose the sensor nodes to identify their fault status. This helps to provide continuous service of the network despite the occurrence of failure due to environmental conditions. Some of the burning issues related to fault diagnosis in wireless sensor networks have been addressed in this thesis mainly focusing on improvement of diagnostic accuracy, reduction of communication overhead and latency, and robustness to erroneous data by using statistical methods. All the proposed algorithms are evaluated analytically and implemented in standard network simulator NS3 (version 3.19). A distributed self fault diagnosis algorithm using neighbor coordination (DSFDNC) is proposed to identify both hard and soft faulty sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. The algorithm is distributed (runs in each sensor node), self diagnosable (each node identifies its fault status) and can diagnose the most common faults like stuck at zero, stuck at one, random data and hard faults. In this algorithm, each sensor node gathered the observed data from the neighbors and computes the mean to check the presence of faulty sensor node. If a node diagnoses a faulty sensor node in the neighbors, then it compares observed data with the data of the neighbors and predicts its probable fault status. The final fault status is determined by diffusing the fault information obtained from the neighbors. The accuracy and completeness of the algorithm are verified based on the statistical analysis over sensors data. The performance parameters such as diagnosis accuracy, false alarm rate, false positive rate, total number of message exchanges, energy consumption, network life time, and diagnosis latency of the DSFDNC algorithm are determined for different fault probabilities and average degrees and compared with existing distributed fault diagnosis algorithms. To enhance the diagnosis accuracy, another self fault diagnosis algorithm is proposed based on hypothesis testing (DSFDHT) using the neighbor coordination approach. The Newman-Pearson hypothesis test is used to diagnose the soft fault status of each sensor node along with the neighbors. The algorithm can diagnose the faulty sensor node when the average degree of the network is less. The diagnosis accuracy, false alarm rate and false positive rate performance of the DSFDHT algorithm are improved over DSFDNC for sparse wireless sensor networks by keeping other performance parameters nearly same. The classical methods for fault finding using mean, median, majority voting and hypothesis testing are not suitable for large scale wireless sensor networks due to large devi- ation in transmitted data by faulty sensor nodes. Therefore, a modified three sigma edit test based self fault diagnosis algorithm (DSFD3SET) is proposed which diagnoses in an efficient manner over a large scale wireless sensor networks. The diagnosis accuracy, false alarm rate, and false positive rate of the proposed algorithm improve as compared to that of the DSFDNC and DSFDHT algorithms. The algorithm enhances the total number of message exchanges, energy consumption, network life time, and diagnosis latency, because the proposed algorithm needs less number of message exchanges over the algorithms such as DSFDNC and DSFDHT. In the DSFDNC, DSFDHT and DSFD3SET algorithms, the faulty sensor nodes are considered as soft faulty nodes which behave permanently. However in wireless sensor networks, the sensor nodes behave either fault free or faulty during different periods of time and are considered as intermittent faulty sensor nodes. Diagnosing intermittent faulty sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks is a challenging problem, because of inconsistent result patterns generated by the sensor nodes. The traditional distributed fault diagnosis (DIFD) algorithms consume more message exchanges to obtain the global fault status of the network. To optimize the number of message exchanges over the network, a self fault diagnosis algorithm is proposed here, which repeatedly conducts the self fault diagnosis procedure based on the modified three sigma edit test over a duration to identify the intermittent faulty sensor nodes. The algorithm needs less number of iterations to identify the intermittent faulty sensor nodes. The simulation results show that, the performance of the HISFD3SET algorithm improves in diagnosis accuracy, false alarm rate and false positive rate over the DIFD algorith

Wireless Sensor Network Pattern Based Fault Isolation in Industrial Applications

In business applications where wireless sensor networks (WSN) are applied, failures in essential parts of the system must be efficiently detected and automatically recovered to avoid major losses. In this thesis we investigate existing fault detection and isolation solutions and present a fault isolation method based on the identification of system patterns. This approach has the ability to learn the behaviour of the network when specific failures occur and to combine known patterns

Construction et maintenance d'une dorsale virtuelle dans les réseaux AD HOC mobiles

Un réseau ad hoc mobile est un réseau complètement distribué ne nécessitant pas d'infrastructure fixe. Les terminaux sont libres de se déplacer n'importe quand et dans n'importe quelle direction. L'absence d'une infrastructure nécessite la collaboration de tous les terminaux pour acheminer le trafic d'une source vers une destination. De nombreux protocoles de routage ont été proposés pour assurer le relayage multi saut, utilisant différentes approches (réactives, proactives et hybrides). Toutefois, les performances de ces protocoles se dégradent en présence de la mobilité. Dans cette thèse, nous proposons d'améliorer la performance des protocoles de routage dans les réseaux ad hoc en construisant une dorsale virtuelle. Une dorsale virtuelle est un sous-ensemble de noeuds sélectionnés de façon à ce que chaque noeud dans le réseau possède au moins un voisin dans la dorsale. L'ensemble des noeuds qui forment la dorsale doit être toujours maintenu connecté même quand les noeuds changent de position. Plus la taille de la dorsale est minimale, plus la maintenance est efficace. Pour construire la dorsale, nous avons proposé un nouvel algorithme basé sur l'approximation de l'ensemble de domination connexe de taille minimale (MCDS). Un réseau ad hoc est généralement modélisé par un graphe à disque unitaire UDG (Unit Disc Graph). Trouver l'ensemble MCDS dans un graphe UDG est un problème NP-Complet. Dans le but de réduire cette complexité, nous avons décomposé le problème en deux étapes: la première étape consiste à déterminer l'ensemble de domination connexe (MDS) au moyen d'une formulation en programmation linéaire et la deuxième étape consiste à trouver l'arbre de recouvrement de l'ensemble MDS et en déduire l'ensemble MCDS. Les résultats de simulations montrent bien que la solution donnée par notre algorithme est très proche de celle fournie par l'analyse théorique. De plus, la taille de la dorsale est nettement inférieure comparée à d'autres algorithmes proposés dans la littérature quand la taille du réseau augmente. Nous avons également proposé une procédure de maintenance distribuée. Cette procédure est basée sur un échange simple des messages de contrôle hello modifiés, ces messages étant utilisés pour la découverte au voisinage. Un noeud qui change de position va alors appliquer cette procédure pour se connecter à la dorsale. Une maintenance locale de la dorsale sera effectuée dans la zone où le noeud va se retrouver dans sa nouvelle position. Les résultats de simulation ont démontré l'efficacité et la fiabilité de cette approche. En effet, plus de 90% des noeuds restent connectés pour une mobilité élevée (vitesse moyenne égale à 30 m/s). De plus, cette procédure est peu sensible au facteur de mise à l'échelle (Scalability). La nature distribuée de la procédure de maintenance s'adapte bien à la dynamique de la structure du réseau engendrée par le mouvement des noeuds. Dans le but de vérifier l'amélioration apportée par la présence d'une dorsale pour les protocoles de routage dans les réseaux ad hoc mobiles, nous avons comparé les performances de certains protocoles de routage, en fonction de la mobilité, en présence de la dorsale avec leurs performances dans leurs versions standards. Les résultats de simulations ont démontré qu'une amélioration de leurs performances peut atteindre 20% pour certains protocoles même pour une mobilité élevée. En conclusion, ce travail de recherche présente de nouvelles solutions pour différents problèmes reliés au routage dans les réseaux ad hoc mobiles