A Trust Based Fuzzy Algorithm for Congestion Control in Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (TFCC)

Network congestion has become a critical issue for resource constrained Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), especially for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs)where large volume of multimedia data is transmitted through the network. If the traffic load is greater than the available capacity of the sensor network, congestion occurs and it causes buffer overflow, packet drop, deterioration of network throughput and quality of service (QoS). Again, the faulty nodes of the network also aggravate congestion by diffusing useless packets or retransmitting the same packet several times. This results in the wastage of energy and decrease in network lifetime. To address this challenge, a new congestion control algorithm is proposed in which the faulty nodes are identified and blocked from data communication by using the concept of trust. The trust metric of all the nodes in the WMSN is derived by using a two-stage Fuzzy inferencing scheme. The traffic flow from source to sink is optimized by implementing the Link State Routing Protocol. The congestion of the sensor nodes is controlled by regulating the rate of traffic flow on the basis of the priority of the traffic. Finally we compare our protocol with other existing congestion control protocols to show the merit of the work.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, conference pape

Distance Aware Relaying Energy-efficient: DARE to Monitor Patients in Multi-hop Body Area Sensor Networks

In recent years, interests in the applications of Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN) is noticeably developed. WBASN is playing a significant role to get the real time and precise data with reduced level of energy consumption. It comprises of tiny, lightweight and energy restricted sensors, placed in/on the human body, to monitor any ambiguity in body organs and measure various biomedical parameters. In this study, a protocol named Distance Aware Relaying Energy-efficient (DARE) to monitor patients in multi-hop Body Area Sensor Networks (BASNs) is proposed. The protocol operates by investigating the ward of a hospital comprising of eight patients, under different topologies by positioning the sink at different locations or making it static or mobile. Seven sensors are attached to each patient, measuring different parameters of Electrocardiogram (ECG), pulse rate, heart rate, temperature level, glucose level, toxins level and motion. To reduce the energy consumption, these sensors communicate with the sink via an on-body relay, affixed on the chest of each patient. The body relay possesses higher energy resources as compared to the body sensors as, they perform aggregation and relaying of data to the sink node. A comparison is also conducted conducted with another protocol of BAN named, Mobility-supporting Adaptive Threshold-based Thermal-aware Energy-efficient Multi-hop ProTocol (M-ATTEMPT). The simulation results show that, the proposed protocol achieves increased network lifetime and efficiently reduces the energy consumption, in relative to M-ATTEMPT protocol.Comment: IEEE 8th International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA'13), Compiegne, Franc

Design and comparative analysis of single-path and epidemic approaches to information and energy management in wireless sensor networks

Intelligent energy management is a key challenge in Wireless Sensor Networks. The choice of an appropriate routing algorithm constitutes a critical factor, especially in unstructured networks where, due to their dynamic nature, a reactive routing protocol is necessary. Such networks often favour packet flooding to fulfil this need. One such algorithm is IDEALS, a technique proposed in the literature, which balances energy consumed with information delivered. This paper evaluates the use of a single-path solution with IDEALS to increase efficiency. Simulation results comparing the two approaches show that the single-path algorithm outperforms flooding in terms of energy consumption for any network size. Furthermore the benefit of IDEALS is preserved as its combination with the single-path algorithm maximises information throughput

An Energy Aware and Secure MAC Protocol for Tackling Denial of Sleep Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks which form part of the core for the Internet of Things consist of resource constrained sensors that are usually powered by batteries. Therefore, careful energy awareness is essential when working with these devices. Indeed,the introduction of security techniques such as authentication and encryption, to ensure confidentiality and integrity of data, can place higher energy load on the sensors. However, the absence of security protection c ould give room for energy drain attacks such as denial of sleep attacks which have a higher negative impact on the life span ( of the sensors than the presence of security features. This thesis, therefore, focuses on tackling denial of sleep attacks from two perspectives A security perspective and an energy efficiency perspective. The security perspective involves evaluating and ranking a number of security based techniques to curbing denial of sleep attacks. The energy efficiency perspective, on the other hand, involves exploring duty cycling and simulating three Media Access Control ( protocols Sensor MAC, Timeout MAC andTunableMAC under different network sizes and measuring different parameters such as the Received Signal Strength RSSI) and Link Quality Indicator ( Transmit power, throughput and energy efficiency Duty cycling happens to be one of the major techniques for conserving energy in wireless sensor networks and this research aims to answer questions with regards to the effect of duty cycles on the energy efficiency as well as the throughput of three duty cycle protocols Sensor MAC ( Timeout MAC ( and TunableMAC in addition to creating a novel MAC protocol that is also more resilient to denial of sleep a ttacks than existing protocols. The main contributions to knowledge from this thesis are the developed framework used for evaluation of existing denial of sleep attack solutions and the algorithms which fuel the other contribution to knowledge a newly developed protocol tested on the Castalia Simulator on the OMNET++ platform. The new protocol has been compared with existing protocols and has been found to have significant improvement in energy efficiency and also better resilience to denial of sleep at tacks Part of this research has been published Two conference publications in IEEE Explore and one workshop paper

Markov Decision Processes with Applications in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of autonomous and resource-limited devices. The devices cooperate to monitor one or more physical phenomena within an area of interest. WSNs operate as stochastic systems because of randomness in the monitored environments. For long service time and low maintenance cost, WSNs require adaptive and robust methods to address data exchange, topology formulation, resource and power optimization, sensing coverage and object detection, and security challenges. In these problems, sensor nodes are to make optimized decisions from a set of accessible strategies to achieve design goals. This survey reviews numerous applications of the Markov decision process (MDP) framework, a powerful decision-making tool to develop adaptive algorithms and protocols for WSNs. Furthermore, various solution methods are discussed and compared to serve as a guide for using MDPs in WSNs