A Comprehensive Analysis of Literature Reported Mac and Phy Enhancements of Zigbee and its Alliances

Wireless communication is one of the most required technologies by the common man. The strength of this technology is rigorously progressing towards several novel directions in establishing personal wireless networks mounted over on low power consuming systems. The cutting-edge communication technologies like bluetooth, WIFI and ZigBee significantly play a prime role to cater the basic needs of any individual. ZigBee is one such evolutionary technology steadily getting its popularity in establishing personal wireless networks which is built on small and low-power digital radios. Zigbee defines the physical and MAC layers built on IEEE standard. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of literature reported MAC and PHY enhancements of ZigBee and its contemporary technologies with respect to performance, power consumption, scheduling, resource management and timing and address binding. The work also discusses on the areas of ZigBee MAC and PHY towards their design for specific applications

Versatility Of Low-Power Wide-Area Network Applications

Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) is regarded as the leading communication technology for wide-area Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. It offers low-power, long-range, and low-cost communication. With different communication requirements for varying IoT applications, many competing LPWAN technologies operating in both licensed (e.g., NB-IoT, LTE-M, and 5G) and unlicensed (e.g., LoRa and SigFox) bands have emerged. LPWANs are designed to support applications with low-power and low data rate operations. They are not well-designed to host applications that involve high mobility, high traffic, or real-time communication (e.g., volcano monitoring and control applications).With the increasing number of mobile devices in many IoT domains (e.g., agricultural IoT and smart city), mobility support is not well-addressed in LPWAN. Cellular-based/licensed LPWAN relies on the wired infrastructure to enable mobility. On the other hand, most unlicensed LPWANs operate on the crowded ISM band or are required to duty cycle, making handling mobility a challenge. In this dissertation, we first identify the key opportunities of LPWAN, highlight the challenges, and show potential directions for future research. We then enable the versatility of LPWAN applications first by enabling applications involving mobility over LPWAN. Specifically, we propose to handle mobility in LPWAN over white space considering Sensor Network Over White Space (SNOW). SNOW is a highly scalable and energy-efficient LPWAN operating over the TV white spaces. TV white spaces are the allocated but locally unused available TV channels (54 - 698 MHz in the US). We proposed a dynamic Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) estimation and compensation technique that considers the impact of the Doppler shift due to mobility. Also, we design energy-efficient and fast BS discovery and association approaches. Finally, we demonstrate the feasibility of our approach through experiments in different deployments. Finally, we present a collision detection and recovery technique called RnR (Reverse & Replace Decoding) that applies to LPWANs. Additionally, we discuss future work to enable handling burst transmission over LPWAN and localization in mobile LPWAN

Dinamička distribucija sigurnosnih ključeva i koalicijski protokol IP adresa za mobilne ad hoc mreže

In mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) a tree-based dynamic address auto-configuration protocol (T-DAAP) is one of the best protocols designed for address assignment as far as the network throughput and packet delays are concerned. Moreover, MANET security is an important factor for many applications given that any node can listen to the channel and overhear the packets being transmitted. In this paper, we merge the address assignment with the security key delivery into one protocol, such that a node in the MANET is configured with IP address and security key simultaneously. To the best of our knowledge, no single protocol provides concurrent assignment of IP addresses and security keys for MANET nodes. The proposed method, which is based on T-DAAP, shows significant enhancements in the required control packets needed for assigning network nodes IP addresses and security keys, MAC layer packets, total end-to-end delay, and channel throughput over those obtained when using separate protocols. Additionally, it provides not only efficient security keys to the nodes from the first moment they join the network, but also secure delivery of the address and security key to all participating nodes. It is noteworthy to mention that providing a complete security model for MANET to detect and countermeasure network security threats and attacks is beyond the scope of our proposed protocol.Kod mobilnih ad hoc mreža (MANET) dinamički protokol za autokonfiguraciju adresa baziran na stablu (T-DAAP) je jedan od najboljih protokola dizajniranih za dodjelu adresa iz perspektive propusnosti mreže i i kašnjenja paketa. štoviše, sigurnost MANET-a je važan faktor za mnoge aplikacije s obzirom da bilo koji čvor može osluškivati kanal i slučajno čuti pakete koji se šalju. U ovom radu, dodjela adresa i dostava sigurnosnih ključeva spojeni su u jedan protokol tako da je čvor u MANET-u konfiguriran simultano s IP adresom i sigurnosnim ključem. Prema saznanjima autora, niti jedan postojeći protokol ne pruža istovremeno dodjeljivanje IP adrese i sigurnosnog ključa za MANET čvorove. Predložena metoda, koja se bazira na T-DAAP-u, pokazuje značajna poboljšanja u odnosu na metode koje koriste odvojene porotokole, kod traženih kontrolnih paketa koji su potrebni za dodjeljivanje IP adresa i sigurnosnih ključeva čvorovima mreže, MAC paketa, ukupnog end-to-end kašnjenja i propusnosti kanala. Dodatno pruža ne samo efikasne sigurnosne ključeve čvorovima od trenutka kad se priključe mreži, nego i sigurno dostavljanje adrese i sigurnosnog ključa svim čvorovima koji sudjeluju u mreži. Važno je spomenuti da je pružanje cjelokupnog sigurnosnog modela za MANET koji detektira dodatno i protumjere prijetnjama i napadima na sigurnost mreže izvan dosega predloženog protokola

Designing a maintenance free multi-channel wireless sensor network protocol

Wireless sensors are low powered device that is scattered to monitor its surroundings. These energy-constrained devices are usually constructed in a hierarchical structured manner where after sometime some of the nodes may deplete energy resulting disruption of the routing topology in a wireless sensor network. A faulty parent node may cause the reconstruction of the network’s routing topology if a maintenance solution is not provided to the protocol. Thus this study focuses on the maintenance free environment for a multi-channel wireless sensor network. A tree-based solution is proposed for the multi-channel protocol and a route diversion is proposed for the maintenance solution. The multi-channel characteristics is used as a tool to determine the route diversion of the children node. A simulation is built to compare the proposed protocol with existing tree-based multi-channel protocol. The result of the proposed protocol shows an improvement to the packet delivery rate by 15%

Mitigating Threats in IoT Network using Device Isolation

In recent years, the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) is seen across various sectors. There is a sharp inclination towards using IoT devices in both home and office premises. Many traditional manufacturers are enhancing their traditional appliances into IoT devices. With the myriad of devices in the market, there also exist vulnerable devices which can be exploited by adversaries. Several security solutions are trying to address different areas of security such as network security, privacy, threat detection, etc. IoT Sentinel is one such novel system that can identify device types based on their pattern of communication. IoT Sentinel proposes several isolation levels that can be used to control the traffic of devices identified as vulnerable. IoT Sentinel uses a Software-defined Networking (SDN) component for controlling the traffic flow for devices and isolating them. In this thesis, we develop a solution to extend IoT Sentinel for device isolation, which is not dependent on SDN. The goal is to build a generic and deployable solution for network segmentation and device isolation that is suitable for home networks. The system divides the network into isolated subnets and places new devices into appropriate subnets. Communication between the subnets is controlled using a firewall thereby isolating them. We dynamically configure a DHCP server to place (lease IP address) new IoT devices identified by IoT Sentinel into appropriate subnets based on their level of vulnerability. Using our solution, we can confine vulnerable devices. Thus, the solution minimizes the damage that could be caused by vulnerable devices present in a network. Finally, we evaluate the developed solution for its security requirement of device isolation. We also present the performance evaluation of our solution based on time-delay and throughput analysis. We observe that our solution adds an acceptable delay to the existing IoT Sentinel processes. We also observe that the system throughput is not significantly affected by firewall rules in a home network scenario

A Comparative Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 Adapters for Wireless Range Finding

ZigBee wireless networks have become increasingly prevalent over the past decade. Based on the IEEE 802.15.4 low data rate wireless standard, ZigBee offers low-cost mesh connectivity in hospitals, refineries, building automation, and critical infrastructure. This thesis explores two ZigBee Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI)-based rangefinding tool sets used for assessing wireless network security: Z-Ranger and Zbfind. Z-Ranger is a new tool set developed herein for the Microchip Zena Wireless Adapter that offers configurable distance estimating parameters and a RSSI resolution of 256 values. Zbfind is an application developed for the Atmel RZUSBstick with no configurable distance estimating parameters and a RSSI resolution of 29 values. The two tool sets are evaluated while rangefinding four low-rate wireless devices indoors and two devices outdoors. Mean error is calculated at each of the 35 collection points and a 99% confidence interval and p-Test are used to identify statistically significant deviations between the two tool sets

Tracing where IoT data are collected and aggregated

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers the infrastructure of the information society. It hosts smart objects that automatically collect and exchange data of various kinds, directly gathered from sensors or generated by aggregations. Suitable coordination primitives and analysis mechanisms are in order to design and reason about IoT systems, and to intercept the implied technological shifts. We address these issues from a foundational point of view. To study them, we define IoT-LySa, a process calculus endowed with a static analysis that tracks the provenance and the manipulation of IoT data, and how they flow in the system. The results of the analysis can be used by a designer to check the behaviour of smart objects, in particular to verify non-functional properties, among which security