Topology Construction in RPL Networks over Beacon-Enabled 802.15.4

In this paper, we propose a new scheme that allows coupling beacon-enabled IEEE 802.15.4 with the RPL routing protocol while keeping full compliance with both standards. We provide a means for RPL to pass the routing information to Layer 2 before the 802.15.4 topology is created by encapsulating RPL DIO messages in beacon frames. The scheme takes advantage of 802.15.4 command frames to solicit RPL DIO messages. The effect of the command frames is to reset the Trickle timer that governs sending DIO messages. We provide a detailed analysis of the overhead incurred by the proposed scheme to understand topology construction costs. We have evaluated the scheme using Contiki and the instruction-level Cooja simulator and compared our results against the most common scheme used for dissemination of the upper-layer information in beacon-enabled PANs. The results show energy savings during the topology construction phase and in the steady state

A Study of Medium Access Control Protocols for Wireless Body Area Networks

The seamless integration of low-power, miniaturised, invasive/non-invasive lightweight sensor nodes have contributed to the development of a proactive and unobtrusive Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN). A WBAN provides long-term health monitoring of a patient without any constraint on his/her normal dailylife activities. This monitoring requires low-power operation of invasive/non-invasive sensor nodes. In other words, a power-efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is required to satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements including low-power consumption. In this paper, we first outline the WBAN requirements that are important for the design of a low-power MAC protocol. Then we study low-power MAC protocols proposed/investigated for WBAN with emphasis on their strengths and weaknesses. We also review different power-efficient mechanisms for WBAN. In addition, useful suggestions are given to help the MAC designers to develop a low-power MAC protocol that will satisfy the stringent WBAN requirements.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 7 table

DADC: A Novel Duty-cycling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 Cluster-tree-based IoT Applications

[EN] The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is one of the widely adopted specifications for realizing different applications of the Internet of Things. It defines several physical layer options and Medium Access Control (MAC) sublayer for devices with low-power operating at low data rates. As devices implementing this standard are primarily battery-powered, minimizing their power consumption is a significant concern. Duty-cycling is one such power conserving mechanism that allows a device to schedule its active and inactive radio periods effectively, thus preventing energy drain due to idle listening. The standard specifies two parameters, beacon order and superframe order, which define the active and inactive period of a device. However, it does not specify a duty-cycling scheme to adapt these parameters for varying network conditions. Existing works in this direction are either based on superframe occupation ratio or buffer/queue length of devices. In this article, the particular limitations of both the approaches mentioned above are presented. Later, a novel duty-cycling mechanism based on MAC parameters is proposed. Also, we analyze the role of synchronization schemes in achieving efficient duty-cycles in synchronized cluster-tree network topologies. A Markov model has also been developed for the MAC protocol to estimate the delay and energy consumption during frame transmission.This work is supported by Science and Engineering Research Board, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India under ECR 2016, Grant No. 2016/001651. This work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad" in the "Programa Estatal de Fomento de la Investigacion Cientifica y Tecnica de Excelencia," "Subprograma Estatal de Generacion de Conocimiento," within the project under Grant No. TIN2017-84802-C2-1-P. This work has also been partially supported by European Union through the ERANETMED (Euromediterranean Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond) Project ERANETMED3-227 SMARTWATIR.Choudhury, N.; Matam, R.; Mukherjee, M.; Lloret, J. (2021). DADC: A Novel Duty-cycling Scheme for IEEE 802.15.4 Cluster-tree-based IoT Applications. ACM Transactions on Internet Technology. 22(2). https://doi.org/10.1145/3409487S22

Energy saving and reliability for Wireless Body Sensor Networks (WBSN)

In healthcare and medical applications, the energy consumption of biosensor nodes affects the collection of biomedical data packets, which are sensed and measured from the human body and then transmitted toward the sink node. Nodes that are near to the sink node consume more energy as all biomedical packets are aggregated through these nodes when communicated to sink node. Each biosensor node in a wireless body sensor networks (WBSNs) such as ECG (Electrocardiogram), should provide accurate biomedical data due to the paramount importance of patient information. We propose a technique to minimise energy consumed by biosensor nodes in the bottleneck zone for WBSNs, which applies the Coordinated Duty Cycle Algorithm (CDCA) to all nodes in the bottleneck zone. Superframe order (SO) selection in CDCA is based on real traffic and the priority of the nodes in the WBSN. Furthermore, we use a special case of network coding, called Random Linear Network coding (RLNC), to encode the biomedical packets to improve reliability through calculating the probability of successful reception (PSR) at the sink node. It can be concluded that CDCA outperforms other algorithms in terms of energy saving as it achieves energy savings for most biosensor nodes in WBSNs. RLNC employs relay nodes to achieve the required level of reliability in WBSNs and to guarantee that the biomedical data is delivered correctly to the sink nod

Joint Scheduling and Duty Cycle Control Framework for Hierarchical Machine-to-Machine Communication Networks.

PhDThis thesis presents a novel distributed optimisation framework for machine-tomachine (M2M) communication networks with dynamic traffic generation, heterogeneous applications and different device capabilities. The aim of the framework is to effectively manage the massive access of energy constrained M2M devices while satisfying different application requirements. The proposed framework has three control blocks which run at cluster heads and M2M gateways: i) The distributed duty cycle control that adapts to dynamic network traffics for IEEE 802.15.4 MAC layer protocol with stop-and-wait automatic repeat request (ARQ) and Go-Back-N ARQ schemes. ii) The cluster head control that applies dynamic programming (DP) and approximate dynamic programming (ADP) techniques to maximise single cluster utility while balancing the tradeoff between system performance and algorithm complexity. iii) The gateway control that applies network utility optimisation (NUM) and mixed integer programming (MIP) techniques to maximise the aggregated long-term network utility while satisfying different application requirements among clusters. Both theoretical and practical concerns are addressed by the proposed control framework. Simulation results show that the proposed framework effectively improve the overall network performance in terms of network throughput, energy efficiency, end-to-end delay and packet drop ratio.Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC)

An Overview on Wireless Sensor Networks Technology and Evolution

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) enable new applications and require non-conventional paradigms for protocol design due to several constraints. Owing to the requirement for low device complexity together with low energy consumption (i.e., long network lifetime), a proper balance between communication and signal/data processing capabilities must be found. This motivates a huge effort in research activities, standardization process, and industrial investments on this field since the last decade. This survey paper aims at reporting an overview of WSNs technologies, main applications and standards, features in WSNs design, and evolutions. In particular, some peculiar applications, such as those based on environmental monitoring, are discussed and design strategies highlighted; a case study based on a real implementation is also reported. Trends and possible evolutions are traced. Emphasis is given to the IEEE 802.15.4 technology, which enables many applications of WSNs. Some example of performance characteristics of 802.15.4-based networks are shown and discussed as a function of the size of the WSN and the data type to be exchanged among nodes

Survey on wireless technology trade-offs for the industrial internet of things

Aside from vast deployment cost reduction, Industrial Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks (IWSAN) introduce a new level of industrial connectivity. Wireless connection of sensors and actuators in industrial environments not only enables wireless monitoring and actuation, it also enables coordination of production stages, connecting mobile robots and autonomous transport vehicles, as well as localization and tracking of assets. All these opportunities already inspired the development of many wireless technologies in an effort to fully enable Industry 4.0. However, different technologies significantly differ in performance and capabilities, none being capable of supporting all industrial use cases. When designing a network solution, one must be aware of the capabilities and the trade-offs that prospective technologies have. This paper evaluates the technologies potentially suitable for IWSAN solutions covering an entire industrial site with limited infrastructure cost and discusses their trade-offs in an effort to provide information for choosing the most suitable technology for the use case of interest. The comparative discussion presented in this paper aims to enable engineers to choose the most suitable wireless technology for their specific IWSAN deployment