An Adaptive Fault-Tolerant Communication Scheme for Body Sensor Networks

A high degree of reliability for critical data transmission is required in body sensor networks (BSNs). However, BSNs are usually vulnerable to channel impairments due to body fading effect and RF interference, which may potentially cause data transmission to be unreliable. In this paper, an adaptive and flexible fault-tolerant communication scheme for BSNs, namely AFTCS, is proposed. AFTCS adopts a channel bandwidth reservation strategy to provide reliable data transmission when channel impairments occur. In order to fulfill the reliability requirements of critical sensors, fault-tolerant priority and queue are employed to adaptively adjust the channel bandwidth allocation. Simulation results show that AFTCS can alleviate the effect of channel impairments, while yielding lower packet loss rate and latency for critical sensors at runtime.Comment: 10 figures, 19 page

Flexible Sensor Network Reprogramming for Logistics

Besides the currently realized applications, Wireless Sensor Networks can be put to use in logistics processes. However, doing so requires a level of flexibility and safety not provided by the current WSN software platforms. This paper discusses a logistics scenario, and presents SensorScheme, a runtime environment used to realize this scenario, based on semantics of the Scheme programming language. SensorScheme is a general purpose WSN platform, providing dynamic reprogramming, memory safety (sandboxing), blocking I/O, marshalled communication, compact code transport. It improves on the state of the art by making better use of the little available memory, thereby providing greater capability in terms of program size and complexity. We illustrate the use of our platform with some application examples, and provide experimental results to show its compactness, speed of operation and energy efficiency

Engine performance characteristics and evaluation of variation in the length of intake plenum

In the engine with multipoint fuel injection system using electronically controlled fuel injectors has an intake manifold in which only the air flows and, the fuel is injected into the intake valve. Since the intake manifolds transport mainly air, the supercharging effects of the variable length intake plenum will be different from carbureted engine. Engine tests have been carried out with the aim of constituting a base study to design a new variable length intake manifold plenum. The objective in this research is to study the engine performance characteristics and to evaluate the effects of the variation in the length of intake plenum. The engine test bed used for experimental work consists of a control panel, a hydraulic dynamometer and measurement instruments to measure the parameters of engine performance characteristics. The control panel is being used to perform administrative and management operating system. Besides that, the hydraulic dynamometer was used to measure the power of an engine by using a cell filled with liquid to increase its load. Thus, measurement instrument is provided in this test to measure the as brake torque, brake power, thermal efficiency and specific fuel consumption. The results showed that the variation in the plenum length causes an improvement on the engine performance characteristics especially on the fuel consumption at high load and low engine speeds which are put forward the system using for urban roads. From this experiment, it will show the behavior of engine performance

Deterministic scheduling for energy efficient and reliable communication in heterogeneous sensing environments in industrial wireless sensor networks

The present-day industries incorporate many applications, and complex processes, hence, a large number of sensors with dissimilar process deadlines and sensor update frequencies will be in place. This paper presents a scheduling algorithm, which takes into account the varying deadlines of the sensors connected to the cluster-head, and formulates a static schedule for Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based communication. The scheme uses IEEE802.15.4e superframe as a baseline and proposes a new superframe structure. For evaluation purposes the update frequencies of different industrial processes are considered. The scheduling algorithm is evaluated under varying network loads by increasing the number of nodes affiliated to a cluster-head. The static schedule generated by the scheduling algorithm offers reduced energy consumption, improved reliability, efficient network load management and improved information to control bits ratio

Dynamic Voltage Scaling Techniques for Energy Efficient Synchronized Sensor Network Design

Building energy-efficient systems is one of the principal challenges in wireless sensor networks. Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS), a technique to reduce energy consumption by varying the CPU frequency on the fly, has been widely used in other settings to accomplish this goal. In this paper, we show that changing the CPU frequency can affect timekeeping functionality of some sensor platforms. This phenomenon can cause an unacceptable loss of time synchronization in networks that require tight synchrony over extended periods, thus preventing all existing DVS techniques from being applied. We present a method for reducing energy consumption in sensor networks via DVS, while minimizing the impact of CPU frequency switching on time synchronization. The system is implemented and evaluated on a network of 11 Imote2 sensors mounted on a truss bridge and running a high-fidelity continuous structural health monitoring application. Experimental measurements confirm that the algorithm significantly reduces network energy consumption over the same network that does not use DVS, while requiring significantly fewer re-synchronization actions than a classic DVS algorithm.unpublishedis peer reviewe

Service and device discovery of nodes in a wireless sensor network

Emerging wireless communication standards and more capable sensors and actuators have pushed further development of wireless sensor networks. Deploying a large number of sensor\ud nodes requires a high-level framework enabling the devices to present themselves and the resources they hold. The device and the resources can be described as services, and in this paper, we review a number of well-known service discovery protocols. Bonjour stands out with its auto-configuration, distributed architecture, and sharing of resources. We also present a lightweight implementation in order to demonstrate that an emerging standards-based device and service discovery protocol can actually be deployed on small wireless sensor nodes