DADC: A Novel Duty-cycling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 Cluster-tree-based IoT Applications

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted specifications for realizing different applications of the Internet of Things. It defines several physical layer options and Medium Access Control (MAC) sublayer for devices with low-power operating at low data rates. As devices implementing this standard are primarily battery-powered, minimizing their power consumption is a significant concern. Duty-cycling is one such power conserving mechanism that allows a device to schedule its active and inactive radio periods effectively, thus preventing energy drain due to idle listening. The standard specifies two parameters, beacon order and superframe order, which define the active and inactive period of a device. However, it does not specify a duty-cycling scheme to adapt these parameters for varying network conditions. Existing works in this direction are either based on superframe occupation ratio or buffer/queue length of devices. In this article, the particular limitations of both the approaches mentioned above are presented. Later, a novel duty-cycling mechanism based on MAC parameters is proposed. Also, we analyze the role of synchronization schemes in achieving efficient duty-cycles in synchronized cluster-tree network topologies. A Markov model has also been developed for the MAC protocol to estimate the delay and energy consumption during frame transmission.This work is supported by Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India under ECR 2016, Grant No. 2016/001651. This work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" in the "Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia," "Subprograma Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento," within the project under Grant No. TIN2017-84802-C2-1-P. This work has also been partially supported by European Union through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) Project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2021). DADC: A Novel Duty-cycling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 Cluster-tree-based IoT Applications. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. 22(2). https://doi.org/10.1145/3409487S22

An Energy Aware and Secure MAC Protocol for Tackling Denial of Sleep Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks which form part of the core for the Internet of Things consist of resource constrained sensors that are usually powered by batteries. Therefore, careful energy awareness is essential when working with these devices. Indeed,the introduction of security techniques such as authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality and integrity of data, can place higher energy load on the sensors. However, the absence of security protection c ould give room for energy drain attacks such as denial of sleep attacks which have a higher negative impact on the life span ( of the sensors than the presence of security features. This thesis, therefore, focuses on tackling denial of sleep attacks from two perspectives A security perspective and an energy efficiency perspective. The security perspective involves evaluating and ranking a number of security based techniques to curbing denial of sleep attacks. The energy efficiency perspective, on the other hand, involves exploring duty cycling and simulating three Media Access Control ( protocols Sensor MAC, Timeout MAC andTunableMAC under different network sizes and measuring different parameters such as the Received Signal Strength RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator ( Transmit power, throughput and energy efficiency Duty cycling happens to be one of the major techniques for conserving energy in wireless sensor networks and this research aims to answer questions with regards to the effect of duty cycles on the energy efficiency as well as the throughput of three duty cycle protocols Sensor MAC ( Timeout MAC ( and TunableMAC in addition to creating a novel MAC protocol that is also more resilient to denial of sleep a ttacks than existing protocols. The main contributions to knowledge from this thesis are the developed framework used for evaluation of existing denial of sleep attack solutions and the algorithms which fuel the other contribution to knowledge a newly developed protocol tested on the Castalia Simulator on the OMNET++ platform. The new protocol has been compared with existing protocols and has been found to have significant improvement in energy efficiency and also better resilience to denial of sleep at tacks Part of this research has been published Two conference publications in IEEE Explore and one workshop paper

Design and analysis of adaptive hierarchical low-power long-range networks

A new phase of evolution of Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication has started where vertical Internet of Things (IoT) deployments dedicated to a single application domain gradually change to multi-purpose IoT infrastructures that service different applications across multiple industries. New networking technologies are being deployed operating over sub-GHz frequency bands that enable multi-tenant connectivity over long distances and increase network capacity by enforcing low transmission rates to increase network capacity. Such networking technologies allow cloud-based platforms to be connected with large numbers of IoT devices deployed several kilometres from the edges of the network. Despite the rapid uptake of Long-power Wide-area Networks (LPWANs), it remains unclear how to organize the wireless sensor network in a scaleable and adaptive way. This paper introduces a hierarchical communication scheme that utilizes the new capabilities of Long-Range Wireless Sensor Networking technologies by combining them with broadly used 802.11.4-based low-range low-power technologies. The design of the hierarchical scheme is presented in detail along with the technical details on the implementation in real-world hardware platforms. A platform-agnostic software firmware is produced that is evaluated in real-world large-scale testbeds. The performance of the networking scheme is evaluated through a series of experimental scenarios that generate environments with varying channel quality, failing nodes, and mobile nodes. The performance is evaluated in terms of the overall time required to organize the network and setup a hierarchy, the energy consumption and the overall lifetime of the network, as well as the ability to adapt to channel failures. The experimental analysis indicate that the combination of long-range and short-range networking technologies can lead to scalable solutions that can service concurrently multiple applications

A novel energy-safe algorithm for enhancing the battery life for IoT sensors applications

Energy safe is mandatory for all isolated IoT tools, as in long way roads, mountains, or even in smart cities. If increasing the lifetime of these tools, the rentability of the global network loop becomes more efficient. Therefore, this paper's base main is to present a new approach for saving energy inside the source nods by supervising the state of energy inside each source nod and calculating the duty cycle factor. The relationship between these parameters is based on an optimization problem formulation. In this respect, the present paper is designed to propose a new approach that deals with increasing the lifetime of the Wireless Sensors Network (WSN) attached nodes, as fixed in the application. The newly devised design rests on implementing the IEEE 802.15.4 standard beacon-enabled mode, involving a cluster tree topology. Accordingly, every subgroup is allotted to apply a specifically different duty cycle, depending on the battery's remaining energy level, which contributes to creating a wide range of functional modes. Hence, various thresholds are defined. Simulation results are proving the efficiency of the proposed approach and show the energetic benefit. The proposed flowchart has minimized the consumed energy for the WSN, which improve the battery lifetime and enhance the IoT applications robustness. Simulations and experiments have been carried out under different conditions and the results proved that the proposed method is a viable solution.publishedVersio

A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted networking specification for Internet of Things (IoT). It defines several physical layer (PHY) options and medium access control (MAC) sub-layer protocols for interconnection of constrained wireless devices. These devices are usually battery-powered and need to support requirements like low-power consumption and low-data rates. The standard has been revised twice to incorporate new PHY layers and improvements learned from implementations. Research in this direction has been primarily centered around improving the energy consumption of devices. Recently, to meet specific Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of different industrial applications, the IEEE 802.15.4e amendment was released that focuses on improving reliability, robustness and latency. In this paper, we carry out a performance-to-cost analysis of Deterministic and Synchronous Multi-channel Extension (DSME) and Time-slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) MAC modes of IEEE 802.15.4e with 802.15.4 MAC protocol to analyze the trade-off of choosing a particular MAC mode over others. The parameters considered for performance are throughput and latency, and the cost is quantified in terms of energy. A Markov model has been developed for TSCH MAC mode to compare its energy costs with 802.15.4 MAC. Finally, we present the applicability of different MAC modes to different application scenarios.This work was supported in part by the SERB, DST, Government of India under Grant ECRA/2016/001651.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2020). A Performance-to-Cost Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 MAC With 802.15.4e MAC Modes. IEEE Access. 8:41936-41950. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2976654S4193641950

Energy-Efficient Communication in Wireless Networks

This chapter describes the evolution of, and state of the art in, energy‐efficient techniques for wirelessly communicating networks of embedded computers, such as those found in wireless sensor network (WSN), Internet of Things (IoT) and cyberphysical systems (CPS) applications. Specifically, emphasis is placed on energy efficiency as critical to ensuring the feasibility of long lifetime, low‐maintenance and increasingly autonomous monitoring and control scenarios. A comprehensive summary of link layer and routing protocols for a variety of traffic patterns is discussed, in addition to their combination and evaluation as full protocol stacks

LBS: A Beacon Synchronization Scheme With Higher Schedulability for IEEE 802.15. 4 Cluster-Tree-Based IoT Applications

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the most widely used link layer technology for building Internet of Things (IoT). It specifies several physical layer options and MAC layer for meeting low-power and low-rate requirements of devices deployed in a network of IoT. The standard also specifies a synchronization scheme for devices connected in a star topology, operating in beacon-enabled (BE) mode using periodic beacons. The BE mode facilitates synchronization among devices for data transmission and is suitable for large networks to establish low duty-cycles. Absence of a such a scheme for a cluster-tree network has confined its application only to nonbeacon mode. The challenge here is to schedule beacon frame transmissions of multiple devices in a nonoverlapping manner to avoid beacon collisions. This paper tackles the problem of synchronization by proposing localized beacon synchronization (LBS) scheme, a distributed technique for beacon scheduling in cluster-tree network topologies. LBS uses 2-hop information and association order to compute beacon transmission offsets that better utilize the available time slots, incur fewer transmissions, and is highly scalable. Further, we analytically show that the schedulability of the proposed scheme is higher compared to other related schemes. In addition, we also address the important issue of resynchronization that has been ignored in all of the prior works. The proposed resynchronization mechanisms consider the interdependencies between synchronization and duty-cycling schemes and are shown to significantly lower the synchronization overhead when synchronization among devices is lost.This work was supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India, under Grant ECR/2016/001651.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2019). LBS: A Beacon Synchronization Scheme With Higher Schedulability for IEEE 802.15. 4 Cluster-Tree-Based IoT Applications. IEEE Internet of Things. 6(5):8883-8896. https://doi.org/10.1109/JIOT.2019.2924317888388966

Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

Analytic Conditions for Energy Neutrality in Uniformly-Formed Wireless Sensor Networks

Future deployments of wireless sensor network (WSN) infrastructures for environmental or event monitoring are expected to be equipped with energy harvesters (e.g. piezoelectric, thermal, photovoltaic) in order to substantially increase their autonomy. In this paper we derive conditions for energy neutrality, i.e. perpetual energy autonomy per sensor node, by balancing the node's expected energy consumption with its expected energy harvesting capability. Our analysis assumes a uniformly-formed WSN, i.e. a network comprising identical transmitter sensor nodes and identical receiver/relay sensor nodes with a balanced cluster-tree topology. The proposed framework is parametric to: (i) the duty cycle for the network activation; (ii) the number of nodes in the same tier of the cluster-tree topology; (iii) the consumption rate of the receiver node(s) that collect (and possibly relay) data along with their own; (iv) the marginal probability density function (PDF) characterizing the data transmission rate per node; (v) the expected amount of energy harvested by each node. Based on our analysis, we obtain the number of nodes leading to the minimumenergy harvestingrequirement for each tier of the WSN cluster-tree topology. We also derive closed-form expressions for the difference in the minimum energy harvesting requirements between four transmission rate PDFs in function of the WSN parameters. Our analytic results are validated via experiments using TelosB sensor nodes and an energy measurement testbed. Our framework is useful for feasibility studies on energy harvesting technologies in WSNs and for optimizing the operational settings of hierarchical WSN-based monitoring infrastructures prior to time-consuming testing and deployment within the application environment

A Study of Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks

The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive lightweight sensor nodes have contributed to the development of a proactive and unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN provides long-term health monitoring of a patient without any constraint on his/her normal dailylife activities. This monitoring requires low-power operation of invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes. In other words, a power-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is required to satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements including low-power consumption. In this paper, we first outline the WBAN requirements that are important for the design of a low-power MAC protocol. Then we study low-power MAC protocols proposed/investigated for WBAN with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. We also review different power-efficient mechanisms for WBAN. In addition, useful suggestions are given to help the MAC designers to develop a low-power MAC protocol that will satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 7 table