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

Characterization of the on-body path Loss at 2.45 GHz and energy efficient WBAN design for dairy cows

Wireless body area networks (WBANs) provide promising applications in the healthcare monitoring of dairy cows. The characterization of the path loss (PL) between on-body nodes constitutes an important step in the deployment of a WBAN. In this paper, the PL between nodes placed on the body of a dairy cow was determined at 2.45 GHz. Finite-difference time domain simulations with two half-wavelength dipoles placed 20 mm above a cow model were performed using a 3-D electromagnetic solver. Measurements were conducted on a live cow to validate the simulation results. Excellent agreement between measurements and simulations was achieved and the obtained PL values as a function of the transmitter-receiver separation were well fitted by a lognormal PL model with a PL exponent of 3.1 and a PL at reference distance ( 10 cm) of 44 dB. As an application, the packet error rate ( PER) and the energy efficiency of different WBAN topologies for dairy cows (i.e., single-hop, multihop, and cooperative networks) were investigated. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes decrease the PER and increase the optimal payload packet size. The analysis results revealed that exploiting multihop and cooperative communication schemes increase the optimal payload packet size and improve the energy efficiency by 30%

Study of Challenges in Sensor Node Deployment in Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless Sensor Network is a network which consists of tiny sensors that senses required information from the sorrounding and passes it to the destination for further processing. Deployment of sensor node in wireless sensor network is the way of placing sensors in network for the collection of desired information from environment. Performance of a network in an application depends on the proper deployment of the sensor nodes. Particularly, when it is the case of heterogeneous sensor network, at most focus is required while deploying sensor nodes. Improper deployment reduces the efficiency of the network. It may not be always possible to deploy the sensor nodes easily .Particularly, in harsh environment, it is too difficult to deploy the nodes. In this paper we give a description of the different types of node deployment schemes and challenges developed so far for wireless sensor network

An LSPI based reinforcement learning approach to enable network cooperation in cognitive wireless sensor networks

The number of wirelessly communicating devices increases every day, along with the number of communication standards and technologies that they use to exchange data. A relatively new form of research is trying to find a way to make all these co-located devices not only capable of detecting each other's presence, but to go one step further - to make them cooperate. One recently proposed way to tackle this problem is to engage into cooperation by activating 'network services' (such as internet sharing, interference avoidance, etc.) that offer benefits for other co-located networks. This approach reduces the problem to the following research topic: how to determine which network services would be beneficial for all the cooperating networks. In this paper we analyze and propose a conceptual solution for this problem using the reinforcement learning technique known as the Least Square Policy Iteration (LSPI). The proposes solution uses a self-learning entity that negotiates between different independent and co-located networks. First, the reasoning entity uses self-learning techniques to determine which service configuration should be used to optimize the network performance of each single network. Afterwards, this performance is used as a reference point and LSPI is used to deduce if cooperating with other co-located networks can lead to even further performance improvements

Energy Aware Heuristic approach for Cluster Head Selection in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks idea is envisioned and defined as self-deployed, error prone, long living inexpensive communication devices that are densely deployed to collect data from physical space. Sensor nodes communicate with each other to detect events depending on the application, to collect and process data, and to transmit the sensed information to the base station by hopping the data from node to node. Major challenge in wireless network is energy consumption, since the sensor devices are deployed on unattended wide areas and replacing their batteries is not very feasible. Therefore, designing energy-aware algorithms becomes a major challenge for extending the lifetime of sensors. The lifetime of the network can be maximized by selecting the most optimal cluster head. In this paper, a heuristic decision making approach is proposed for producing energy-aware clusters with optimal selection of cluster head. This helps to improve the efficiency and accuracy and overcome the drawbacks like getting trapped at a local extreme in the optimization process

Impromptu Deployment of Wireless Relay Networks: Experiences Along a Forest Trail

We are motivated by the problem of impromptu or as- you-go deployment of wireless sensor networks. As an application example, a person, starting from a sink node, walks along a forest trail, makes link quality measurements (with the previously placed nodes) at equally spaced locations, and deploys relays at some of these locations, so as to connect a sensor placed at some a priori unknown point on the trail with the sink node. In this paper, we report our experimental experiences with some as-you-go deployment algorithms. Two algorithms are based on Markov decision process (MDP) formulations; these require a radio propagation model. We also study purely measurement based strategies: one heuristic that is motivated by our MDP formulations, one asymptotically optimal learning algorithm, and one inspired by a popular heuristic. We extract a statistical model of the propagation along a forest trail from raw measurement data, implement the algorithms experimentally in the forest, and compare them. The results provide useful insights regarding the choice of the deployment algorithm and its parameters, and also demonstrate the necessity of a proper theoretical formulation.Comment: 7 pages, accepted in IEEE MASS 201

SWARM INTELLIGENCE BASED RELIABLE AND ENERGY BALANCE ROUTING ALGORITHM FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

Energy is an extremely crucial resource for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Many routing techniques have been proposed for finding the minimum energy routing paths with a view to extend the network lifetime. However, this might lead to unbalanced distribution of energy among sensor nodes resulting in, energy hole problem. Therefore, designing energy-balanced routing technique is a challenge area of research in WSN.  Moreover, dynamic and harsh environments pose great challenges in the reliability of WSN. To achieve reliable wireless communication within WSN, it is essential to have reliable routing protocol. Furthermore, due to the limited memory resources of sensor nodes, full utilization of such resources with less buffer overflow remains as a one of main consideration when designing a routing protocol for WSN. Consequently, this paper proposes a routing scheme that uses SWARM intelligence to achieve both minimum energy consumption and balanced energy consumption among sensor nodes for WSN lifetime extension. In addition, data reliability is considered in our model where, the sensed data can reach the sink node in a more reliable way. Finally, buffer space is considered to reduce the packet loss and energy consumption due to the retransmission of the same packets. Through simulation, the performance of proposed algorithm is compared with the previous work such as EBRP, ACO, TADR, SEB, and CLR-Routing