Concepts and evolution of research in the field of wireless sensor networks

The field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is experiencing a resurgence of interest and a continuous evolution in the scientific and industrial community. The use of this particular type of ad hoc network is becoming increasingly important in many contexts, regardless of geographical position and so, according to a set of possible application. WSNs offer interesting low cost and easily deployable solutions to perform a remote real time monitoring, target tracking and recognition of physical phenomenon. The uses of these sensors organized into a network continue to reveal a set of research questions according to particularities target applications. Despite difficulties introduced by sensor resources constraints, research contributions in this field are growing day by day. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of most recent literature of WSNs and outline open research issues in this field

A Survey on Communication Networks for Electric System Automation

Published in Computer Networks 50 (2006) 877–897, an Elsevier journal. The definitive version of this publication is available from Science Direct. Digital Object Identifier:10.1016/j.comnet.2006.01.005In today’s competitive electric utility marketplace, reliable and real-time information become the key factor for reliable delivery of power to the end-users, profitability of the electric utility and customer satisfaction. The operational and commercial demands of electric utilities require a high-performance data communication network that supports both existing functionalities and future operational requirements. In this respect, since such a communication network constitutes the core of the electric system automation applications, the design of a cost-effective and reliable network architecture is crucial. In this paper, the opportunities and challenges of a hybrid network architecture are discussed for electric system automation. More specifically, Internet based Virtual Private Networks, power line communications, satellite communications and wireless communications (wireless sensor networks, WiMAX and wireless mesh networks) are described in detail. The motivation of this paper is to provide a better understanding of the hybrid network architecture that can provide heterogeneous electric system automation application requirements. In this regard, our aim is to present a structured framework for electric utilities who plan to utilize new communication technologies for automation and hence, to make the decision making process more effective and direct.This work was supported by NEETRAC under Project #04-157

Garnet: a middleware architecture for distributing data streams originating in wireless sensor networks

We present an architectural framework, Garnet, which provides a data stream centric abstraction to encourage the manipulation and exploitation of data generated in sensor networks. By providing middleware services to allow mutually-unaware applications to manipulate sensor behaviour, a scalable, extensible platform is provided. We focus on sensor networks with transmit and receive capabilities as this combination poses greater challenges for managing and distributing sensed data. Our approach allows simple and sophisticated sensors to coexist, and allows data consumers to be mutually unaware of each other This also promotes the use of middleware services to mediate among consumers with potentially conflicting demands for shared data. Garnet has been implemented in Java, and we report on our progress to date and outline some likely scenarios where the use of our distributed architecture and accompanying middleware support enhances the task of sharing data in sensor network environments

Multi-Hop Routing Mechanism for Reliable Sensor Computing

Current research on routing in wireless sensor computing concentrates on increasing the service lifetime, enabling scalability for large number of sensors and supporting fault tolerance for battery exhaustion and broken nodes. A sensor node is naturally exposed to various sources of unreliable communication channels and node failures. Sensor nodes have many failure modes, and each failure degrades the network performance. This work develops a novel mechanism, called Reliable Routing Mechanism (RRM), based on a hybrid cluster-based routing protocol to specify the best reliable routing path for sensor computing. Table-driven intra-cluster routing and on-demand inter-cluster routing are combined by changing the relationship between clusters for sensor computing. Applying a reliable routing mechanism in sensor computing can improve routing reliability, maintain low packet loss, minimize management overhead and save energy consumption. Simulation results indicate that the reliability of the proposed RRM mechanism is around 25% higher than that of the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) mechanisms

A Survey and Future Directions on Clustering: From WSNs to IoT and Modern Networking Paradigms

Many Internet of Things (IoT) networks are created as an overlay over traditional ad-hoc networks such as Zigbee. Moreover, IoT networks can resemble ad-hoc networks over networks that support device-to-device (D2D) communication, e.g., D2D-enabled cellular networks and WiFi-Direct. In these ad-hoc types of IoT networks, efficient topology management is a crucial requirement, and in particular in massive scale deployments. Traditionally, clustering has been recognized as a common approach for topology management in ad-hoc networks, e.g., in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Topology management in WSNs and ad-hoc IoT networks has many design commonalities as both need to transfer data to the destination hop by hop. Thus, WSN clustering techniques can presumably be applied for topology management in ad-hoc IoT networks. This requires a comprehensive study on WSN clustering techniques and investigating their applicability to ad-hoc IoT networks. In this article, we conduct a survey of this field based on the objectives for clustering, such as reducing energy consumption and load balancing, as well as the network properties relevant for efficient clustering in IoT, such as network heterogeneity and mobility. Beyond that, we investigate the advantages and challenges of clustering when IoT is integrated with modern computing and communication technologies such as Blockchain, Fog/Edge computing, and 5G. This survey provides useful insights into research on IoT clustering, allows broader understanding of its design challenges for IoT networks, and sheds light on its future applications in modern technologies integrated with IoT.acceptedVersio