Modular Energy-Efficient and Robust Paradigms for a Disaster-Recovery Process over Wireless Sensor Networks

Robust paradigms are a necessity, particularly for emerging wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. The lack of robust and efficient paradigms causes a reduction in the provision of quality of service (QoS) and additional energy consumption. In this paper, we introduce modular energy-efficient and robust paradigms that involve two archetypes: (1) the operational medium access control (O-MAC) hybrid protocol and (2) the pheromone termite (PT) model. The O-MAC protocol controls overhearing and congestion and increases the throughput, reduces the latency and extends the network lifetime. O-MAC uses an optimized data frame format that reduces the channel access time and provides faster data delivery over the medium. Furthermore, O-MAC uses a novel randomization function that avoids channel collisions. The PT model provides robust routing for single and multiple links and includes two new significant features: (1) determining the packet generation rate to avoid congestion and (2) pheromone sensitivity to determine the link capacity prior to sending the packets on each link. The state-of-the-art research in this work is based on improving both the QoS and energy efficiency. To determine the strength of O-MAC with the PT model; we have generated and simulated a disaster recovery scenario using a network simulator (ns-3.10) that monitors the activities of disaster recovery staff; hospital staff and disaster victims brought into the hospital. Moreover; the proposed paradigm can be used for general purpose applications. Finally; the QoS metrics of the O-MAC and PT paradigms are evaluated and compared with other known hybrid protocols involving the MAC and routing features. The simulation results indicate that O-MAC with PT produced better outcomes.https://doi.org/10.3390/s15071616

QoS in Body Area Networks: A survey

Body Area Networks (BANs) are becoming increasingly popular and have shown great potential in real-time monitoring of the human body. With the promise of being cost-effective and unobtrusive and facilitating continuous monitoring, BANs have attracted a wide range of monitoring applications, including medical and healthcare, sports, and rehabilitation systems. Most of these applications are real time and life critical and require a strict guarantee of Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of timeliness, reliability, and so on. Recently, there has been a number of proposals describing diverse approaches or frameworks to achieve QoS in BANs (i.e., for different layers or tiers and different protocols). This survey put these individual efforts into perspective and presents a more holistic view of the area. In this regard, this article identifies a set of QoS requirements for BAN applications and shows how these requirements are linked in a three-tier BAN system and presents a comprehensive review of the existing proposals against those requirements. In addition, open research issues, challenges, and future research directions in achieving these QoS in BANs are highlighted.</jats:p

Energy efficiency considerations in software‐defined wireless body area networks

Wireless body area networks (WBAN) provide remote services for patient monitoring which allows healthcare practitioners to diagnose, monitor, and prescribe them without their physical presence. To address the shortcomings of WBAN, software-defined networking (SDN) is regarded as an effective approach in this prototype. However, integrating SDN into WBAN presents several challenges in terms of safe data exchange, architectural framework, and resource efficiency. Because energy expenses account for a considerable portion of network expenditures, energy efficiency has to turn out to be a crucial design criterion for modern networking methods. However, creating energy-efficient systems is difficult because they must balance energy efficiency with network performance. In this article, the energy efficiency features are discussed that can widely be used in the software-defined wireless body area network (SDWBAN). A comprehensive survey has been carried out for various modern energy efficiency models based on routing algorithms, optimization models, secure data delivery, and traffic management. A comparative assessment of all the models has also been carried out for various parameters. Furthermore, we explore important concerns and future work in SDWBAN energy efficiency

Multi-constrained mechanism for intra-body area network quality-of-service aware routing in wireless body sensor networks

Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSNs) have witnessed tremendous research interests in a wide range of medical and non-medical fields. In the delaysensitive application scenarios, the critical data packets are highly delay-sensitive which require some Quality-of-Service (QoS) to reach the intended destinations. The categorization of data packets and selection of poor links may have detrimental impacts on overall performance of the network. In WBSN, various biosensors transmit the sensed data towards a destination for further analysis. However, for an efficient data transmission, it is very important to transmit the sensed data towards the base station by satisfying the QoS multi-constrained requirements of the healthcare applications in terms of least end-to-end delay and high reliability, throughput, Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), and route stability performance. Most of the existing WBSN routing schemes consider traffic prioritization to solve the slot allocation problem. Consequently, the data transmission may face high delays, packet losses, retransmissions, lack of bandwidth, and insufficient buffer space. On the other hand, an end-to-end route is discovered either using a single or composite metric for the data transmission. Thus, it affects the delivery of the critical data through a less privileged manner. Furthermore, a conventional route repair method is considered for the reporting of broken links which does not include surrounding interference. As such, this thesis presents the Multi-constrained mechanism for Intra- Body Area Network QoS aware routing (MIQoS) with Low Latency Traffic Prioritization (LLTP), Optimized Route Discovery (ORD), and Interference Adaptive Route Repair (IARR) schemes for the healthcare application of WBSN with an objective of improving performance in terms of end-to-end delay, route stability, and throughput. The proposed LLTP scheme considers various priority queues with an optimized scheduling mechanism that dynamically identifies and prioritizes the critical data traffic in an emergency situation to enhance the critical data transmission. Consequently, this will avoid unnecessary queuing delay. The ORD scheme incorporates an improved and multi-facet routing metric, Link Quality Metric (LQM) optimizes the route selection by considering link delay, link delivery ratio, and link interference ratio. The IARR scheme identifies the links experiencing transmission issues due to channel interference and makes a coherent decision about route breakage based on the long term link performance to avoid unnecessary route discovery notifications. The simulation results verified the improved performance in terms of reducing the end-to-end delay by 29%, increasing the throughput by 22% and route stability by 26% as compared to the existing routing schemes such as TTRP, PA-AODV and standard AODV. In conclusion, MIQoS proves to be a suitable routing mechanism for a wide range of interesting applications of WBSN that require fast, reliable and multi-hop communication in heavily loaded network traffic scenarios

ZEQoS: a new energy and QoS-aware routing protocol for communication of sensor devices in healthcare system

Publisher's Version/PDFThis paper proposes a novel integrated energy and QoS-aware routing protocol with the considerations of energy, end-to-end latency, and reliability requirements of body area network (BAN) communication. The proposed routing protocol, called ZEQoS, introduces two main modules (MAC layer and network layer) and three algorithms (neighbor table constructor, routing table constructor, and path selector). To handle ordinary packets (OPs), delay-sensitive packets (DSPs), and reliability-sensitive packets (RSPs), the new mechanism first calculates the communication costs, end-to-end path delays, and end-to-end path reliabilities of all possible paths from a source to destination. The protocol then selects the best possible path(s) for OPs, RSPs, and DSPs by considering their QoS requirement. Extensive simulations using OMNeT++ based simulator Castalia 3.2 demonstrate that the performance of the proposed integrated algorithm is satisfactory when tested on a real hospital scenario, and all data types including OPs, DSPs, and RSPs are used as offered traffic. Simulations also show that the ZEQoS also offers better performance in terms of higher throughput, less packets dropped on MAC and network layers, and lower network traffic than comparable protocols including DMQoS and noRouting

An Energy Efficient, Load Balancing, and Reliable Routing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

AN ENERGY EFFICIENT, LOAD BALANCING, AND RELIABLE ROUTING PROTOCOL FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS by Kamil Samara The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2016 Under the Supervision of Professor Hossein Hosseini The Internet of Things (IoT) is shaping the future of Computer Networks and Computing in general, and it is gaining ground very rapidly. The whole idea has originated from the pervasive presence of a variety of things or objects equipped with the internet connectivity. These devices are becoming cheap and ubiquitous, at the same time more powerful and smaller with a variety of onboard sensors. All these factors with the availability of unique addressing, provided by the IPv6, has made these devices capable of collaborating with each other to accomplish common tasks. Mobile AdHoc Networks (MANETS) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in particular play a major role in the backbone of IoT. Routing in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) has been a challenging task for researchers in the last several years because the conventional routing algorithms, such as the ones used in IP-based networks, are not well suited for WSNs because these conventional routing algorithms heavily rely on large routing tables that need to be updated periodically. The size of a WSN could range from hundreds to tens of thousands of nodes, which will make routing tables’ size very large. Managing large routing tables is not feasible in WSNs due to the limitations of resources. The directed diffusion algorithm is a well-known routing algorithm for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The directed diffusion algorithm saves energy by sending data packets hop by hop and by enforcing paths to avoid flooding. The directed diffusion algorithm does not attempt to find the best or healthier paths (healthier paths are paths that use less total energy than others and avoid critical nodes). Hence the directed diffusion algorithm could be improved by enforcing the use of healthier paths, which will result in less power consumption. We propose an efficient routing protocol for WSNs that gives preference to the healthier paths based on the criteria of the total energy available on the path, the path length, and the avoidance of critical nodes. This preference is achieved by collecting information about the available paths and then using non-incremental machine learning to enforce path(s) that meet our criteria. In addition to preferring healthier paths, our protocol provides Quality of Service (QoS) features through the implementation of differentiated services, where packets are classified as critical, urgent, and normal, as defined later in this work. Based on this classification, different packets are assigned different priority and resources. This process results in higher reliability for the delivery of data, and shorter delivery delay for the urgent and critical packets. This research includes the implementation of our protocol using a Castalia Simulator. Our simulation compares the performance of our protocol with that of the directed diffusion algorithm. The comparison was made on the following aspects: • Energy consumption • Reliable delivery • Load balancing • Network lifetime • Quality of service Simulation results did not point out a significant difference in performance between the proposed protocol and the directed diffusion algorithm in smaller networks. However, when the network’s size started to increase the results showed better performance by the proposed protocol

Prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic medium access control protocol for wireless body area networks

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) provide continuous monitoring of a patient by using heterogeneous Bio-Medical Sensor Nodes (BMSNs). WBANs pose unique constraints due to contention-based prioritized channel access, sporadic emergency traffic handling and emergency-based traffic adaptivity. In the existing medium access control protocols, the available contention-based prioritized channel access is incomplete due to the repetitions in backoff period ranges. The emergency traffic is considered based on traffic generation rate as well as sporadic emergency traffic that is not handled at multiple BMSNs during contention. In an emergency situation, non-emergency traffic is ignored, traffic is not adjusted dynamically with balanced throughput and energy consumption, and the energy of non-emergency traffic BMSNs is not preserved. In this research, prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was designed to consider contention-based prioritized channel access for heterogenous BMSNs along with sporadic emergency traffic handling and dynamic adjustment of traffic in sporadic emergency situation. Firstly, a Traffic Class Prioritization based slotted-CSMA/CA (TCP-CSMA/CA) scheme was developed to provide contention-based prioritized channel access by removing repetitions in backoff period ranges. Secondly, an emergency Traffic Class Provisioning based slotted-CSMA/CA (ETCP-CSMA/CA) scheme was presented to deliver the sporadic emergency traffic instantaneously that occurs either at a single BMSN or multiple BMSNs, with minimum delay and packet loss without ignoring non-emergency traffic. Finally, an emergency-based Traffic Adaptive slotted-CSMA/CA (ETA-CSMA/CA) scheme provided dynamic adjustment of traffic to accommodate the variations in heterogeneous traffic rates along with energy preservation of non-emergency traffic BMSNs, creating a balance between throughput and energy in the sporadic emergency situation. Performance comparison was conducted by simulation using NS-2 and the results revealed that the proposed schemes were better than ATLAS, PLA-MAC, eMC-MAC and PG-MAC protocols. The least improved performances were in terms of packet delivery delay 10%, throughput 14%, packet delivery ratio 21%, packet loss ratio 28% and energy consumption 37%. In conclusion, the prioritization-based adaptive emergency traffic MAC protocol outperformed the existing protocols

Enhanced priority-based adaptive energy-aware mechanisms for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) continues to find its use in our lives. However, research has shown that it has barely attained an optimal performance, particularly in the aspects of data heterogeneity, data prioritization, data routing, and energy efficiency, all of which affects its operational lifetime. The IEEE 802.15.4 protocol standard, which manages data forwarding across the Data Link Layer (DLL) does not address the impact of heterogeneous data and node Battery-Level (BL) which is an indicator for node battery life. Likewise, mechanisms proposed in the literature – TCP-CSMA/CA, QWL-RPL and SSRA have not proffered optimal solution as they encourage excessive computational overhead which results in shortened operational lifetime. These problems are inherited on the Network Layer (NL) where data routing is implemented. Mitigating these challenges, this research presents an Enhanced Priority-based Adaptive Energy-Aware Mechanisms (EPAEAM) for Wireless Sensor Networks. The first mechanism is the Optimized Backoff Mechanism for Prioritized Data (OBMPD) in Wireless Sensor Networks. This mechanism proposed the Class of Service Traffic Priority-based Medium Access Control (CSTP-MAC). The CSTP-MAC is implemented on the DLL. In this mechanism, unique backoff period expressions compute backoff periods according to the class and priority of the heterogeneous data. This approach improved network performances which enhanced network lifetime. The second mechanism is the Shortest Path Priority-Based Objective Function (SPPB-OF) for Wireless Sensor Networks. SPPB-OF is implemented across the NL. SPPB-OF implements a unique shortest path computation algorithm to generate energy-efficient shortest path between the source and destination nodes. The third mechanism is the Cross-Layer Energy-Efficient Priority-based Data Path (CL-EEPDP) for Wireless Sensor Networks. CL-EEPDP is implemented across the DLL and NL with considerations for node battery-level. A unique mathematical expression, Node Battery-Level Estimator (NBLE) is used to estimate the BL of neighbouring nodes. The knowledge of the BL together with the priority of data are used to decide an energy-efficient next-hop node. Benchmarking the EPAEAM with related mechanisms - TCP-CSMA/CA, QWL-RPL and SSRA, results show that EPAEAM achieved improved network performance with a packet delivery ratio (PDR) of 95.4%, and power-saving of 90.4%. In conclusion, the EPAEAM mechanism proved to be a viable energy-efficient solution for a multi-hop heterogeneous data WSN deployment with support for extended operational lifetime. The limitations and scope of these mechanisms are that their application is restricted to the data-link and network layers, moreover, only two classes of data are considered, that is; High Priority Data (HPD) and Low Priority Data (LPD)

A priority-based energy efficient multi-hop routing protocol with congestion control for wireless body area network

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are advanced and integrated monitoring networks for healthcare applications. In these networks, different types of Biomedical Sensor Nodes (BSNs) are used to monitor physiological parameters of the human body. The BSNs have limited resources such as energy, memory and computation power. These limited resources make the network challenging especially in terms of energy consumption. Efficient routing schemes are required to save the energy during communication processes. Additionally, the BSNs generate sensitive and non-sensitive data packets, which need to be routed according to their priority. In order to address these problems, a priority-based Energy Efficient Multihop Routing protocol with congestion control (3EMR) for wireless body area network was developed that comprises of three different schemes. First, an Optimal Next-hop Selection (ONS) scheme was developed based on the cost function of routing parameters to dynamically select best next-hop for forwarding data packets. Second, a Priority Based Routing (PBR) scheme was developed to forward data packets according to data priority, which is based on sensitivity of the data with regards to patience’s life. Third, a Congestion Avoidance and Mitigation (CAM) scheme was developed to save energy consumption and packet loss due to congestion by considering packet flow adjustment and congestion zone avoidance based strategy. It improvement is benchmarked against related solutions, and they are Healthcare-aware Optimized Congestion Avoidance (HOCA), Differentiated Rate control for Congestion (DRC), Priority based Cross Layer Routing (PCLR), Even Energy-consumption and Backside Routing (EEBR), and Energy Efficient Routing (EER) scheme. The simulation results demonstrated that the 3EMR scheme achieved significant improvement in terms of increased network lifetime by 31.4%, increased throughput by 33.2%, reduced packet loss 30.9%, increased packet delivery ratio by 21.1% and reduced energy consumption 26.8%. Thus, the proposed routing scheme has proven to be an energy efficient solution for data communication in wireless body area networks