Wireless Sensor Network Virtualization: A Survey

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are the key components of the emerging Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigm. They are now ubiquitous and used in a plurality of application domains. WSNs are still domain specific and usually deployed to support a specific application. However, as WSN nodes are becoming more and more powerful, it is getting more and more pertinent to research how multiple applications could share a very same WSN infrastructure. Virtualization is a technology that can potentially enable this sharing. This paper is a survey on WSN virtualization. It provides a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art and an in-depth discussion of the research issues. We introduce the basics of WSN virtualization and motivate its pertinence with carefully selected scenarios. Existing works are presented in detail and critically evaluated using a set of requirements derived from the scenarios. The pertinent research projects are also reviewed. Several research issues are also discussed with hints on how they could be tackled.Comment: Accepted for publication on 3rd March 2015 in forthcoming issue of IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials. This version has NOT been proof-read and may have some some inconsistencies. Please refer to final version published in IEEE Xplor

Overlay virtualized wireless sensor networks for application in industrial internet of things : a review

Abstract: In recent times, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are broadly applied in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) in order to enhance the productivity and efficiency of existing and prospective manufacturing industries. In particular, an area of interest that concerns the use of WSNs in IIoT is the concept of sensor network virtualization and overlay networks. Both network virtualization and overlay networks are considered contemporary because they provide the capacity to create services and applications at the edge of existing virtual networks without changing the underlying infrastructure. This capability makes both network virtualization and overlay network services highly beneficial, particularly for the dynamic needs of IIoT based applications such as in smart industry applications, smart city, and smart home applications. Consequently, the study of both WSN virtualization and overlay networks has become highly patronized in the literature, leading to the growth and maturity of the research area. In line with this growth, this paper provides a review of the development made thus far concerning virtualized sensor networks, with emphasis on the application of overlay networks in IIoT. Principally, the process of virtualization in WSN is discussed along with its importance in IIoT applications. Different challenges in WSN are also presented along with possible solutions given by the use of virtualized WSNs. Further details are also presented concerning the use of overlay networks as the next step to supporting virtualization in shared sensor networks. Our discussion closes with an exposition of the existing challenges in the use of virtualized WSN for IIoT applications. In general, because overlay networks will be contributory to the future development and advancement of smart industrial and smart city applications, this review may be considered by researchers as a reference point for those particularly interested in the study of this growing field

A Survey on Classification of Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

Late progressions in remote innovation has prompted gigantic development in organization of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). WSNs are involved sensors and actuators hubs, thickly conveyed over some geographic area to detect, gather, handle and send information remotely to focal information authority. The correspondence among various remote sensor hubs is controlled by directing conventions; consequently the execution of WSN exceedingly relies on upon embraced steering strategy. Numerous such vitality proficient and quality steering conventions have been outlined throughout the years so as to build the execution of correspondence in WSNs. In this paper, a comprehensive survey and scientific classification of steering conventions is talked about on the premise of system structures and information transmission procedures. This review will help WSN framework fashioners to choose fitting directing convention for specific application

Unified Role Assignment Framework For Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks are made possible by the continuing improvements in embedded sensor, VLSI, and wireless radio technologies. Currently, one of the important challenges in sensor networks is the design of a systematic network management framework that allows localized and collaborative resource control uniformly across all application services such as sensing, monitoring, tracking, data aggregation, and routing. The research in wireless sensor networks is currently oriented toward a cross-layer network abstraction that supports appropriate fine or course grained resource controls for energy efficiency. In that regard, we have designed a unified role-based service paradigm for wireless sensor networks. We pursue this by first developing a Role-based Hierarchical Self-Organization (RBSHO) protocol that organizes a connected dominating set (CDS) of nodes called dominators. This is done by hierarchically selecting nodes that possess cumulatively high energy, connectivity, and sensing capabilities in their local neighborhood. The RBHSO protocol then assigns specific tasks such as sensing, coordination, and routing to appropriate dominators that end up playing a certain role in the network. Roles, though abstract and implicit, expose role-specific resource controls by way of role assignment and scheduling. Based on this concept, we have designed a Unified Role-Assignment Framework (URAF) to model application services as roles played by local in-network sensor nodes with sensor capabilities used as rules for role identification. The URAF abstracts domain specific role attributes by three models: the role energy model, the role execution time model, and the role service utility model. The framework then generalizes resource management for services by providing abstractions for controlling the composition of a service in terms of roles, its assignment, reassignment, and scheduling. To the best of our knowledge, a generic role-based framework that provides a simple and unified network management solution for wireless sensor networks has not been proposed previously

An Efficient Analysis on Performance Metrics for optimized Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Networks have the revolutionary significance in many new monitoring applications and self-organized systems. Based on the nature of application WSN are needed to support various levels of Quality of Services. Quality of service parameters are most significant aspect in WSN during data transmission from sensor nodes to sink. This paper surveys the factor on reliability, predictability, sustainability, optimal clustering and scheduling by analyzing various models existing in WSN. A network that satisfies all these Qos parameters ensures outstanding throughput in performance. We concluded by exploring some of the dimensions for research interest and addressed open issues ahead to enhance the performance of WSNs

A Survey on Routing Protocols for Large-Scale Wireless Sensor Networks

With the advances in micro-electronics, wireless sensor devices have been made much smaller and more integrated, and large-scale wireless sensor networks (WSNs) based the cooperation among the significant amount of nodes have become a hot topic. “Large-scale” means mainly large area or high density of a network. Accordingly the routing protocols must scale well to the network scope extension and node density increases. A sensor node is normally energy-limited and cannot be recharged, and thus its energy consumption has a quite significant effect on the scalability of the protocol. To the best of our knowledge, currently the mainstream methods to solve the energy problem in large-scale WSNs are the hierarchical routing protocols. In a hierarchical routing protocol, all the nodes are divided into several groups with different assignment levels. The nodes within the high level are responsible for data aggregation and management work, and the low level nodes for sensing their surroundings and collecting information. The hierarchical routing protocols are proved to be more energy-efficient than flat ones in which all the nodes play the same role, especially in terms of the data aggregation and the flooding of the control packets. With focus on the hierarchical structure, in this paper we provide an insight into routing protocols designed specifically for large-scale WSNs. According to the different objectives, the protocols are generally classified based on different criteria such as control overhead reduction, energy consumption mitigation and energy balance. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of each protocol, we highlight their innovative ideas, describe the underlying principles in detail and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Moreover a comparison of each routing protocol is conducted to demonstrate the differences between the protocols in terms of message complexity, memory requirements, localization, data aggregation, clustering manner and other metrics. Finally some open issues in routing protocol design in large-scale wireless sensor networks and conclusions are proposed

Collaborative Sensing and Communication Schemes for Cooperative Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy conservation is considered to be one of the key design challenges within resource constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs) that leads the researchers to investigate energy efficient protocols with some application specific challenges. Dynamic clustering scheme within the deployed sensor nodes is generally considered as one of the energy conservation techniques. However, unbalanced distribution of cluster heads, highly variable number of sensor nodes in the clusters and high number of sensor nodes involved in event reporting tend to drain out the network energy quickly, resulting in unplanned decrease in network lifetime. Performing power aware signal processing, defining communication methods that can provide progressive accuracy and, optimising processing and communication for signal transmission are the challenging tasks. In this thesis, energy efficient solutions are proposed for collaborative sensing and cooperative communication within resource constrained WSNs. A dynamic and cooperative clustering as well as neighbourhood formation scheme is proposed that is expected to evenly distribute the energy demand from the cluster heads and optimise the number of sensor nodes involved in event reporting. The distributive and dynamic behaviour of the proposed framework provides an energy efficient self-organising solution for WSNs that results in an improved network lifetime. The proposed framework is independent of the nature of the sensing type to support applications that require either time-driven sensing, event-driven sensing or hybrid of both sensing types. A cooperative resource selection and transmission scheme is also proposed to improve the performance of collaborative WSNs in terms of maintaining link reliability. As a part of the proposed cooperative nature of transmission, the transmitreceive antennae selection scheme and lattice reduction algorithm have also been considered. It is assumed that the channel state information is estimated at the ii receiver and there is a feedback link between the wireless sensing nodes and the fusion centre receiver. For the ease of system design engineer to achieve a predefined capacity or quality of service, a set of analytical frameworks that provide tighter error performance lower bound for zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean square error (MMSE) and maximum likelihood (ML) detection schemes are also presented. The dynamic behaviour has been adopted within the framework with a proposed index derived from the received measure of the channel quality, which has been attained through the feedback channel from the fusion centre. The dynamic property of the proposed framework makes it robust against time-varying behaviour of the propagation environment. Finally, a unified framework of collaborative sensing and communication schemes for cooperative WSNs is proposed to provide energy efficient solutions within resource constrained environments. The proposed unified framework is fully decentralised which reduces the amount of information required to be broadcasted. Such distributive capability accelerates the decision-making process and enhances the energy conservation. Furthermore, it is validated by simulation results that the proposed unified framework provides a trade-off between network lifetime and transmission reliability while maintaining required quality of service

On the Medium Access Control Protocols Suitable for Wireless Sensor Networks – A Survey

A MAC (Medium Access Control) protocol has direct impact on the energy efficiency and traffic characteristics of any Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Due to the inherent differences in WSN’s requirements and application scenarios, different kinds of MAC protocols have so far been designed especially targeted to WSNs, though the primary mode of communications is wireless like any other wireless network. This is the subject topic of this survey work to analyze various aspects of the MAC protocols proposed for WSNs. To avoid collision and ensure reliability, before any data transmission between neighboring nodes in MAC layer, sensor nodes may need sampling channel and synchronizing. Based on these needs, we categorize the major MAC protocols into three classes, analyze each protocol’s relative advantages and disadvantages, and finally present a comparative summary which could give a snapshot of the state-of-the-art to guide other researchers find appropriate areas to work on. In spite of various existing survey works, we have tried to cover all necessary aspects with the latest advancements considering the major works in this area

Coverage Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: Review and Future Directions

The coverage problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be generally defined as a measure of how effectively a network field is monitored by its sensor nodes. This problem has attracted a lot of interest over the years and as a result, many coverage protocols were proposed. In this survey, we first propose a taxonomy for classifying coverage protocols in WSNs. Then, we classify the coverage protocols into three categories (i.e. coverage aware deployment protocols, sleep scheduling protocols for flat networks, and cluster-based sleep scheduling protocols) based on the network stage where the coverage is optimized. For each category, relevant protocols are thoroughly reviewed and classified based on the adopted coverage techniques. Finally, we discuss open issues (and recommend future directions to resolve them) associated with the design of realistic coverage protocols. Issues such as realistic sensing models, realistic energy consumption models, realistic connectivity models and sensor localization are covered