Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs

Game Theoretic Solution for Power Management in IoT-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

[EN] Internet of things (IoT) is a very important research area, having many applications such as smart cities, intelligent transportation system, tracing, and smart homes. The underlying technology for IoT are wireless sensor networks (WSN). The selection of cluster head (CH) is significant as a part of the WSN's optimization in the context of energy consumption. In WSNs, the nodes operate on a very limited energy source, therefore, the routing protocols designed must meet the optimal utilization of energy consumption in such networks. Evolutionary games can be designed to meet this aspect by providing an adequately efficient CH selection mechanism. In such types of mechanisms, the network nodes are considered intelligent and independent to select their own strategies. However, the existing mechanisms do not consider a combination of many possible parameters associated with the smart nodes in WSNs, such as remaining energy, selfishness, hop-level, density, and degree of connectivity. In our work, we designed an evolutionary game-based approach for CH selection, combined with some vital parameters associated with sensor nodes and the entire networks. The nodes are assumed to be smart, therefore, the aspect of being selfish is also addressed in this work. The simulation results indicate that our work performs much better than typical evolutionary game-based approachesThe authors acknowledge the support of the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund 2019 for this work.Sohail, M.; Khan, S.; Ahmad, R.; Singh, D.; Lloret, J. (2019). Game Theoretic Solution for Power Management in IoT-Based Wireless Sensor Networks. Sensors. 19(18):1-20. https://doi.org/10.3390/s19183835120191

ENHANCE FAIR ROUTING WITH RESOURCE FLEXIBLE NODE ALLOCATION IN WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Wireless sensor network is a network composed of a large number of sensor nodes with limited radio capabilities and one or a few sinks that collect data from sensor nodes. Sensor nodes are powered by small batteries, hence, the energy consumption in operating a WSN should be as low as possible. The wireless sensor network present all sensor nodes generate an equal amount of data packets in a WSN, nodes around a sink have to relay more packets and tend to die earlier than other nodes because the energy consumption of sensor nodes is almost completely dominated by data communication rather than by sensing and processing. Hence, the whole network lifetime can be prolonged by balancing the communication load at heavily loaded nodes around a sink. This problem is called the energy hole problem and is one of the most important issues for WSNs. Existing system analysis the heterogeneity of networks and a fair cooperative routing method, to avoid unfair improvement only on certain networks and to introduce one or a few shared nodes that can use multiple channels to relay data packets

Game theoretic and auction-based algorithms towards opportunistic communications in LPWA LoRa networks

Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks have been the enabling technology for large-scale sensor and actuator networks. Low cost, energy-efficiency and longevity of such networks make them perfect candidates for smart city applications. LoRa is a new LPWA standard based on spread spectrum technology, which is suitable for sensor nodes enabling long battery life and bi-directional communication but with low data rates. In this paper, we will demonstrate a use-case inspired model in which, end-nodes with multiple radio transceivers (LoRa/WiFi/BLE) have the option to interconnect via multiple networks to improve communications resilience under the diverse conditions of a smart city of a billion devices. To facilitate this, each node has the ability to switch radio communications opportunistically and adaptively, and this is based on the application requirements and dynamic radio parameters

Energy Aware Algorithms for managing Wireless Sensor Networks

While the majority of the current Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) research has prioritized either the coverage of the monitored area or the energy efficiency of the network, it is clear that their relationship must be further studied in order to find optimal solutions that balance the two factors. Higher degrees of redundancy can be attained by increasing the number of active sensors monitoring a given area which results in better performance. However, this in turn increases the energy being consumed. In our research, we focus on attaining a solution that considers several optimization parameters such as the percentage of coverage, quality of coverage and energy consumption. The problem is modeled using a bipartite graph and employs an evolutionary algorithm to handle the activation and deactivation of the sensors. An accelerated version of the algorithm is also presented; this algorithm attempts to cleverly mutate the string being considered after analyzing the desired output conditions and performs a calculated crossover depending on the fitness of the parent strings. This results in a quicker convergence and a considerable reduction in the search time for attaining the desired solutions. Proficient cluster formation in wireless sensor networks reduces the total energy consumed by the network and prolongs the life of the network. There are various clustering approaches proposed, depending on the application and the objective to be attained. There are situations in which sensors are randomly dispersed over the area to be monitored. In our research, we also propose a solution for such scenarios using heterogeneous networks where a network has to self-organize itself depending on the physical allocations of sensors, cluster heads etc. The problem is modeled using a multi-stage graph and employs combinatorial algorithms to determine which cluster head a particular sensor would report to and which sink node a cluster head would report to. The solution proposed provides flexibility so that it can be applied to any network irrespective of density of resources deployed in the network. Finally we try to analyze how the modification of the sequence of execution of the two methods modifies the results. We also attempt to diagnose the reasons responsible for it and conclude by highlighting the advantages of each of the sequence