A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

PSM-DMO: power save mode and discontinuous BLE mesh operation

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh profile, standardized by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), has an increasing interest in IoT solutions. However, the standard assumes that relay and friend nodes should be continuously scanning the channel awaiting any incoming transmissions. This could be very inefficient in terms of energy consumption, particularly in application scenarios where the backbone of the mesh network cannot be powered and traffic is infrequent. Hence, we present a novel strategy, named PSM-DMO, that minimizes the scan periods and thus, significantly reduces the overall energy consumption of the mesh network. PSM-DMO is defined as a new and optional feature for the currently published BLE mesh specifications, coexists with the standard operation, and is implemented without modifying the core of the specification. The proposal, that ensures the reliability of the mesh operation, can be used in BLE sensor networks that can tolerate a certain transmission delay. PSM-DMO replaces the continuous scan by a periodic but asynchronous polling process whereby the relay and sink nodes interrogate their neighbors about the existence of data to receive or to retransmit through the network. Nodes only go into scan mode during the period of time the mesh network will be involved in the transmission and dissemination. This period is estimated by the node which is the source of data, it is announced to its neighbors and it is propagated consecutively by all the relay nodes until the destination. PSM-DMO allows a theoretical reduction in the energy consumption of relay nodes up to 99.24 %.This work has been supported in part by the Spanish Ministry of Science through the projects RTI2018-099880-B-C32. RTI2018-095684-B-I00 and RTI2018-099063-B-I00 with ERFD funds, and by the Government of Aragon (Reference Group T31_20R).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

PSM-DMO: power save mode and discontinuous BLE mesh operation

The Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh profile, standardized by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), has an increasing interest in IoT solutions. However, the standard assumes that relay and friend nodes should be continuously scanning the channel awaiting any incoming transmissions. This could be very inefficient in terms of energy consumption, particularly in application scenarios where the backbone of the mesh network cannot be powered and traffic is infrequent. Hence, we present a novel strategy, named PSM-DMO, that minimizes the scan periods and thus, significantly reduces the overall energy consumption of the mesh network. PSM-DMO is defined as a new and optional feature for the currently published BLE mesh specifications, coexists with the standard operation, and is implemented without modifying the core of the specification. The proposal, that ensures the reliability of the mesh operation, can be used in BLE sensor networks that can tolerate a certain transmission delay. PSM-DMO replaces the continuous scan by a periodic but asynchronous polling process whereby the relay and sink nodes interrogate their neighbors about the existence of data to receive or to retransmit through the network. Nodes only go into scan mode during the period of time the mesh network will be involved in the transmission and dissemination. This period is estimated by the node which is the source of data, it is announced to its neighbors and it is propagated consecutively by all the relay nodes until the destination. PSM-DMO allows a theoretical reduction in the energy consumption of relay nodes up to 99.24 %

Integrated Architecture for Configuration and Service Management in MANET Environments

Esta tesis nos ha permitido trasladar algunos conceptos teóricos de la computación ubicua a escenarios reales, identificando las necesidades específicas de diferentes tipos de aplicaciones. Con el fin de alcanzar este objetivo, proponemos dos prototipos que proporcionan servicios sensibles al contexto en diferentes entornos, tales como conferencias o salas de recuperación en hospitales. Estos prototipos experimentales explotan la tecnología Bluetooth para ofrecer información basada en las preferencias del usuario. En ambos casos, hemos llevado a cabo algunos experimentos con el fin de evaluar el comportamiento de los sistemas y su rendimento. También abordamos en esta tesis el problema de la autoconfiguración de redes MANET basadas en el estándar 802.11 a través de dos soluciones novedosas. La primera es una solución centralizada que se basa en la tecnología Bluetooth, mientras la segunda es una solución distribuida que no necesita recurrir a ninguna tecnología adicional, ya que se basa en el uso del parámetro SSID. Ambos métodos se han diseñado para permitir que usuarios no expertos puedan unirse a una red MANET de forma transparente, proporcionando una configuración automática, rápida, y fiable de los terminales. Los resultados experimentales en implementaciones reales nos han permitido evaluar el rendimiento de las soluciones propuestas y demostrar que las estaciones cercanas se pueden configurar en pocos segundos. Además, hemos comparado ambas soluciones entre sí para poner de manifiesto las diferentes ventajas y desventajas en cuanto a rendimento. La principal contribución de esta tesis es EasyMANET, una plataforma ampliable y configurable cuyo objetivo es automatizar lo máximo posible las tareas que afectan a la configuración y puesta en marcha de redes MANET, de modo que su uso sea más simple y accesible.Cano Reyes, J. (2012). Integrated Architecture for Configuration and Service Management in MANET Environments [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/14675Palanci

BLE Connectivity and its Multi-hop Extension for IoT Applications

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 공과대학 전기·컴퓨터공학부, 2017. 8. 박세웅.Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is one of the representative low-power communication protocols that are being used to provide wireless connectivity for resource constrained devices as part of Internet of Things (IoT). Despite its commercial adoption, BLE's current use is limited to short-range applications due to the lack of research about its coverage extension. In this dissertation, we investigate two issues that need to be addressed for BLE's network coverage extension and also consider a new application scenario using a BLE-based multi-hop network. First, we tackle the BLE connection maintenance and energy consumption problems by adaptively controlling one of BLE's link layer parameters (TCI ) under dynamic channel condition. We formulate an optimization problem to find an optimal TCI and design a connection interval adaptation mechanism for BLE to achieve high energy efficiency while maintaining robust connectivity. We evaluate our proposed solutions through testbed experiments and simulation which shows that it reduces energy consumption of BLE in dynamic channel environments. Secondly, we consider a protocol architecture that aims to run IPv6 routing protocol for low power and lossy networks (RPL) over BLE to construct BLE-based multi-hop networks. We design an adaptation layer between BLE and RPL which tightly couples RPL and BLE operation. We implement the adaptation layer in a Linux kernel to realize RPL over BLE. Through extensive experiments in an indoor testbed, we evaluate the performance of RPL over BLE and compare the performance results with that of RPL over IEEE 802.15.4 which shows signicant improvement. Lastly, we consider a new application scenario of BLE using the coverage extension of BLE based on multi-hop networking. We propose a novel layered architecture of Wi-Fi and BLE that constructs an energy efficient and high data rate supportable ad-hoc network for disaster communication. We implement the proposed architecture in Linux kernel and evaluate the performance through our indoor testbed. The result shows that our proposed solution reduces the average power consumption of nodes in the testbed compared to a conventional Wi-Fi ad-hoc network.1 Introduction 1  1.1 Motivation 1  1.2 Related Work 4  1.2.1 Low power consumption of BLE 4  1.2.2 BLE multi-hop networking 5  1.3 Contributions and Outline 6  2 CABLE: Connection Interval Adaptation for BLE in Dynamic Wireless Environments 10  2.1 Introduction 10  2.2 Background and Problem Statement 14  2.2.1 Link layer operation 14  2.2.2 Connection loss due to supervision timeout 16  2.2.3 BLE protocol stack and connection interval set- ting 17  2.2.4 Problem of BLE with xed connection interval 19  2.3 Connection Interval Optimization 22  2.3.1 Problem formulation 22  2.3.2 Problem solution 26  2.4 CABLE System Design 29  2.4.1 PER estimator 30  2.4.2 TCI adjuster 33  2.5 Performance Evaluation 34  2.5.1 Simulation results 35  2.5.2 Experimental results 40  2.6 Summary 41  3 A Synergistic Architecture for RPL over BLE 43  3.1 Introduction 43  3.2 Background 47 3.2.1 RPL operation 47  3.2.2 BLE link layer operation 48  3.2.3 6LoWPAN for BLE 50  3.3 Design of RPL over BLE 52  3.3.1 Synergistic Network Architecture for RPL over BLE 52  3.3.2 DIO broadcast over advertising channels 54   3.3.3 Routing metric for RPL over BLE 57  3.3.4 RPL parent change with BLE connection man- agement 60  3.4 ALBER Implementation 61  3.5 Performance Evaluation 64  3.5.1 Testbed environments 64  3.5.2 Comparison of RPL over BLE vs. RPL over 802.15.4 65  3.5.3 Eect of varying connection interval 70  3.5.4 Eect of ECI-based routing metric 71  3.6 Summary 73  4 Wi-BLE: A Novel Layered Architecture of Wi-Fi & BLE Networks for Disaster Communications 74  4.1 Introduction 74  4.2 Background 78  4.2.1 Application requirements of ad-hoc networks for disaster communications 78  4.2.2 Candidate wireless interfaces for ad-hoc networks 79  4.2.3 Wi-BLE use scenario 79  4.3 Wi-BLE System Overview 80  4.3.1 Protocol Architecture 80  4.3.2 Operation Overview 81  4.4 MABLE: Mobile Ad-hoc for BLE 82  4.4.1 Routing protocol selection for MABLE 82  4.4.2 BLE Channel Usage for AODV over BLE 84  4.5 Wi-BLE: Wi-Fi Ad-hoc over BLE networks 88  4.5.1 Wi-BLE control packet delivery over BLE path 88  4.5.2 Routing protocol for Wi-BLE 89  4.5.3 Wi-Fi on/o control for energy saving 92  4.6 Implementation 92  4.7 Performance Evaluation 94  4.7.1 Testbed Environments 94  4.7.2 Hop distance &Throughput 95  4.7.3 Power Consumption 97  4.8 Summary 98  5 Conclusion 100  5.1 Research Contributions 100  5.2 Further Research Direction 102Docto

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

IF-MANET: Interoperable framework for heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks

The advances in low power micro-processors, wireless networks and embedded systems have raised the need to utilize the significant resources of mobile devices. These devices for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and sensors are gaining enormous processing power, storage capacity and wireless bandwidth. In addition, the advancement in wireless mobile technology has created a new communication paradigm via which a wireless network can be created without any priori infrastructure called mobile ad hoc network (MANET). While progress is being made towards improving the efficiencies of mobile devices and reliability of wireless mobile networks, the mobile technology is continuously facing the challenges of un-predictable disconnections, dynamic mobility and the heterogeneity of routing protocols. Hence, the traditional wired, wireless routing protocols are not suitable for MANET due to its unique dynamic ad hoc nature. Due to the reason, the research community has developed and is busy developing protocols for routing in MANET to cope with the challenges of MANET. However, there are no single generic ad hoc routing protocols available so far, which can address all the basic challenges of MANET as mentioned before. Thus this diverse range of ever growing routing protocols has created barriers for mobile nodes of different MANET taxonomies to intercommunicate and hence wasting a huge amount of valuable resources. To provide interaction between heterogeneous MANETs, the routing protocols require conversion of packets, meta-model and their behavioural capabilities. Here, the fundamental challenge is to understand the packet level message format, meta-model and behaviour of different routing protocols, which are significantly different for different MANET Taxonomies. To overcome the above mentioned issues, this thesis proposes an Interoperable Framework for heterogeneous MANETs called IF-MANET. The framework hides the complexities of heterogeneous routing protocols and provides a homogeneous layer for seamless communication between these routing protocols. The framework creates a unique Ontology for MANET routing protocols and a Message Translator to semantically compare the packets and generates the missing fields using the rules defined in the Ontology. Hence, the translation between an existing as well as newly arriving routing protocols will be achieved dynamically and on-the-fly. To discover a route for the delivery of packets across heterogeneous MANET taxonomies, the IF-MANET creates a special Gateway node to provide cluster based inter-domain routing. The IF-MANET framework can be used to develop different middleware applications. For example: Mobile grid computing that could potentially utilise huge amounts of aggregated data collected from heterogeneous mobile devices. Disaster & crises management applications can be created to provide on-the-fly infrastructure-less emergency communication across organisations by utilising different MANET taxonomies