TDA-MAC : TDMA without clock synchronization in underwater acoustic networks

This paper investigates the application of underwater acoustic sensor networks for large scale monitoring of the ocean environment. The low propagation speed of acoustic signals presents a fundamental challenge in coordinating the access to the shared communication medium in such networks. In this paper, we propose two medium access control (MAC) protocols, namely, Transmit Delay Allocation MAC (TDA-MAC) and Accelerated TDA-MAC, that are capable of providing time division multiple access (TDMA) to sensor nodes without the need for centralized clock synchronization. A comprehensive simulation study of a network deployed on the sea bed shows that the proposed protocols are capable of closely matching the throughput and packet delay performance of ideal synchronized TDMA. The TDA-MAC protocols also significantly outperform T-Lohi, a classical contention-based MAC protocol for underwater acoustic networks, in terms of network throughput and, in many cases, end-To-end packet delay. Furthermore, the assumption of no clock synchronization among different devices in the network is a major advantage of TDA-MAC over other TDMA-based MAC protocols in the literature. Therefore, it is a feasible networking solution for real-world underwater sensor network deployments

Receiver-Initiated Handshaking MAC Based On Traffic Estimation for Underwater Sensor Networks

In underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), the unique characteristics of acoustic channels have posed great challenges for the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols. The long propagation delay problem has been widely explored in recent literature. However, the long preamble problem with acoustic modems revealed in real experiments brings new challenges to underwater MAC design. The overhead of control messages in handshaking-based protocols becomes significant due to the long preamble in underwater acoustic modems. To address this problem, we advocate the receiver-initiated handshaking method with parallel reservation to improve the handshaking efficiency. Despite some existing works along this direction, the data polling problem is still an open issue. Without knowing the status of senders, the receiver faces two challenges for efficient data polling: when to poll data from the sender and how much data to request. In this paper, we propose a traffic estimation-based receiver-initiated MAC (TERI-MAC) to solve this problem with an adaptive approach. Data polling in TERI-MAC depends on an online approximation of traffic distribution. It estimates the energy efficiency and network latency and starts the data request only when the preferred performance can be achieved. TERI-MAC can achieve a stable energy efficiency with arbitrary network traffic patterns. For traffic estimation, we employ a resampling technique to keep a small computation and memory overhead. The performance of TERI-MAC in terms of energy efficiency, channel utilization, and communication latency is verified in simulations. Our results show that, compared with existing receiver-initiated-based underwater MAC protocols, TERI-MAC can achieve higher energy efficiency at the price of a delay penalty. This confirms the strength of TERI-MAC for delay-tolerant applications

Receiver-Initiated Handshaking MAC Based on Traffic Estimation for Underwater Sensor Networks

In underwater sensor networks (UWSNs), the unique characteristics of acoustic channels have posed great challenges for the design of medium access control (MAC) protocols. The long propagation delay problem has been widely explored in recent literature. However,the long preamble problem with acoustic modems revealed in real experiments brings new challenges to underwater MAC design. The overhead of control messages in handshaking-based protocols becomes significant due to the long preamble in underwater acoustic modems. To address this problem, we advocate the receiver-initiated handshaking method with parallel reservation to improve the handshaking efficiency. Despite some existing works along this direction, the data polling problem is still an open issue. Without knowing the status of senders, the receiver faces two challenges for efficient data polling: when to poll data from the sender and how much data to request. In this paper, we propose a traffic estimation-basedreceiver-initiated MAC(TERI-MAC)to solve this problem with an adaptive approach. Data polling in TERI-MAC depends on an online approximation of traffic distribution. It estimates the energy efficiency and network latency and starts the data request only when the preferred performance can be achieved. TERI-MAC can achieve a stable energy efficiency with arbitrary network traffic patterns. For traffic estimation, we employ a resampling technique to keep a small computation and memory overhead. The performance of TERI-MAC in terms of energy efficiency, channel utilization, and communication latency is verified in simulations. Our results show that, compared with existing receiver-initiated-based underwater MAC protocols, TERI-MAC can achieve higher energy efficiency at the price of a delay penalty. This confirms the strength of TERI-MAC for delay-tolerant applications

Effective Medium Access Control for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks

This work is concerned with the design, analysis and development of effective Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (UASNs). The use of acoustic waves underwater places time-variant channel constraints on the functionality of MAC protocols. The contrast between traffic characteristics of the wide-ranging applications of UASNs makes it hard to design a single MAC protocol that can be adaptive to various applications. This thesis proposes MAC solutions that can meet the environmental and non-environmental challenges posed underwater. Scheduling-based schemes are the most common MAC solutions for UASNs, but scheduling is also challenging in such a dynamic environment. The preferable way of synchronisation underwater is the use of a global scheduler, guard intervals and exchange of timing signals. To this end, single-hop topologies suit UASN applications very well. The Combined Free and Demand Assignment Multiple Access (CFDAMA) is a centralised, scheduling-based MAC protocol demonstrating simplicity and adaptability to the time-variant channel and traffic characteristics. It is shown to minimise end-to-end delay, maximise channel utilisation and maintain fairness amongst nodes. This thesis primarily introduces two novel robust MAC solutions for UASNs, namely CFDAMA with Systematic Round Robin and CFDAMA without clock synchronisation (CFDAMA-NoClock). The former scheme is more suitable for large-scale and widely-spread UASNs, whereas the latter is a more feasible MAC solution when synchronisation amongst node clocks cannot be attained. Both analytical and comprehensive event-driven Riverbed simulations of underwater scenarios selected based on realistic sensor deployments show that the two protocols make it possible to load the channel up to higher levels of its capacity with controlled delay performance superior to that achievable with the traditional CFDAMA schemes. The new scheduling features make the CFDAMA-NoClock scheme a very feasible networking solution for robust and efficient UASN deployments in the real world

Impact of Medium Access Control Strategies on the Effectiveness of Advanced Cooperative Hybrid ARQ Techniques

n/

Performance of Non-Uniform Duty-Cycled ContikiMAC in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a promising technology in Internet of Things (IoTs) because it can be implemented in many applications. However, a main drawback of WSN is it has limited energy because each sensor node is powered using batteries. Therefore, duty-cycle mechanisms are introduced to reduce power consumption of the sensor nodes by ensuring the sensor nodes in the sleep mode almost of the time in order to prolong the network lifetime. One of the de-facto standard of duty-cycle mechanism in WSN is ContikiMAC, which is the default duty-cycle mechanism in Contiki OS. ContikiMAC ensures nodes can participate in network communication yet keep it in sleep mode for roughly 99\% of the time. However, it is found that the ContikiMAC does not perform well in dynamic network conditions. In a bursty network, ContikiMAC provides a poor performance in term of packet delivery ratio, which is caused by congestion. One possible solution is ContikiMAC should increase its duty-cycle rate in order to support the bursty traffic. This solution creates a non-uniform duty-cycle rates among the sensor nodes in the network. This work aims to investigate the effect of non-uniform duty-cycle rates on the performance on ContikiMAC. Cooja simulator is selected as the simulation tool. Three different simulation scenarios are considered depending on the Clear Channel Assessment Rate (CCR) configurations: a low uniform CCR value (Low-CCR), a high uniform CCR value (High-CCR) and non-uniform CCR values (Non-uniform-CCR). The simulation results show that the Low-CCR scenario provides the worst performance of PDR. On the other hand, the High-CCR scenario provides the best performance of PDR. The Non-uniform-CCR provides PDR in between of Low-CCR and High-CCR

Energy Efficiency in Communications and Networks

The topic of "Energy Efficiency in Communications and Networks" attracts growing attention due to economical and environmental reasons. The amount of power consumed by information and communication technologies (ICT) is rapidly increasing, as well as the energy bill of service providers. According to a number of studies, ICT alone is responsible for a percentage which varies from 2% to 10% of the world power consumption. Thus, driving rising cost and sustainability concerns about the energy footprint of the IT infrastructure. Energy-efficiency is an aspect that until recently was only considered for battery driven devices. Today we see energy-efficiency becoming a pervasive issue that will need to be considered in all technology areas from device technology to systems management. This book is seeking to provide a compilation of novel research contributions on hardware design, architectures, protocols and algorithms that will improve the energy efficiency of communication devices and networks and lead to a more energy proportional technology infrastructure

SPARCO: Stochastic Performance Analysis with Reliability and Cooperation for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks

Reliability is a key factor for application-oriented Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs) which are utilized for gaining certain objectives and a demand always exists for efficient data routing mechanisms. Cooperative routing is a promising technique which utilizes the broadcast feature of wireless medium and forwards data with cooperation using sensor nodes as relays. Here, we present a cooperation-based routing protocol for underwater networks to enhance their performance called Stochastic Performance Analysis with Reliability and Cooperation (SPARCO). Cooperative communication is explored in order to design an energy-efficient routing scheme for UWSNs. Each node of the network is assumed to be consisting of a single omnidirectional antenna and multiple nodes cooperatively forward their transmissions taking advantage of spatial diversity to reduce energy consumption. Both multihop and single-hop schemes are exploited which contribute to lowering of path-losses present in the channels connecting nodes and forwarding of data. Simulations demonstrate that SPARCO protocol functions better regarding end-to-end delay, network lifetime, and energy consumption comparative to noncooperative routing protocol—improved Adaptive Mobility of Courier nodes in Threshold-optimized Depth-based routing (iAMCTD). The performance is also compared with three cooperation-based routing protocols for UWSN: Cognitive Cooperation (Cog-Coop), Cooperative Depth-Based Routing (CoDBR), and Cooperative Partner Node Selection Criteria for Cooperative Routing (Coop Re and dth)

A roadmap to developing energy-efficient MAC protocol in wireless sensor networks: a case of ADP-MAC development and implementation

Over the past two decades, hundreds of protocols have been developed for diversified applications of WSN corresponding to different layers in the communication stack. Among these, Media Access Control (MAC) layer protocols are of great interest due to providing possibility of optimizing performance parameters. Despite availability of a large number of survey articles, there remains a gap for a tutorial that offers guidelines about the development process of MAC protocol. In this paper, we present a detailed tutorial for developing a MAC protocol starting from the stage of research gap identification and ending at the performance evaluation. We described the journey of development and implementation of a novel asynchronous MAC protocol ADP-MAC (Adaptive and Dynamic Polling MAC) as a case study. ADP-MAC was developed by deploying a novel concept of channel polling interval distributions, and was compared against Synchronized Channel Polling- MAC (SCP-MAC) and lightweight Traffic Auto-Adaptation based MAC (T-AAD). Finally, we proposed major milestones of protocol development along with recommendations about publishing the research