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

On Modeling Geometric Joint Sink Mobility with Delay-Tolerant Cluster-less Wireless Sensor Networks

Moving Sink (MS) in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has appeared as a blessing because it collects data directly from the nodes where the concept of relay nodes is becomes obsolete. There are, however, a few challenges to be taken care of, like data delay tolerance and trajectory of MS which is NP-hard. In our proposed scheme, we divide the square field in small squares. Middle point of the partitioned area is the sojourn location of the sink, and nodes around MS are in its transmission range, which send directly the sensed data in a delay-tolerant fashion. Two sinks are moving simultaneously; one inside and having four sojourn locations and other in outer trajectory having twelve sojourn locations. Introduction of the joint mobility enhances network life and ultimately throughput. As the MS comes under the NP-hard problem, we convert it into a geometric problem and define it as, Geometric Sink Movement (GSM). A set of linear programming equations has also been given in support of GSM which prolongs network life time

From carbon nanotubes and silicate layers to graphene platelets for polymer nanocomposites

In spite of extensive studies conducted on carbon nanotubes and silicate layers for their polymer-based nanocomposites, the rise of graphene now provides a more promising candidate due to its exceptionally high mechanical performance and electrical and thermal conductivities. The present study developed a facile approach to fabricate epoxy–graphene nanocomposites by thermally expanding a commercial product followed by ultrasonication and solution-compounding with epoxy, and investigated their morphologies, mechanical properties, electrical conductivity and thermal mechanical behaviour. Graphene platelets (GnPs) of 3.5

AM-DisCNT: Angular Multi-hop DIStance based Circular Network Transmission Protocol for WSNs

The nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) contain limited energy resources, which are needed to transmit data to base station (BS). Routing protocols are designed to reduce the energy consumption. Clustering algorithms are best in this aspect. Such clustering algorithms increase the stability and lifetime of the network. However, every routing protocol is not suitable for heterogeneous environments. AM-DisCNT is proposed and evaluated as a new energy efficient protocol for wireless sensor networks. AM-DisCNT uses circular deployment for even consumption of energy in entire wireless sensor network. Cluster-head selection is on the basis of energy. Highest energy node becomes CH for that round. Energy is again compared in the next round to check the highest energy node of that round. The simulation results show that AM-DisCNT performs better than the existing heterogeneous protocols on the basis of network lifetime, throughput and stability of the system.Comment: IEEE 8th International Conference on Broadband and Wireless Computing, Communication and Applications (BWCCA'13), Compiegne, Franc

EMEEDP: Enhanced Multi-hop Energy Efficient Distributed Protocol for Heterogeneous Wireless Sensor Network

In WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) every sensor node sensed the data and transmit it to the CH (Cluster head) or BS (Base Station). Sensors are randomly deployed in unreachable areas, where battery replacement or battery charge is not possible. For this reason, Energy conservation is the important design goal while developing a routing and distributed protocol to increase the lifetime of WSN. In this paper, an enhanced energy efficient distributed protocol for heterogeneous WSN have been reported. EMEEDP is proposed for heterogeneous WSN to increase the lifetime of the network. An efficient algorithm is proposed in the form of flowchart and based on various clustering equation proved that the proposed work accomplishes longer lifetime with improved QOS parameters parallel to MEEP. A WSN implemented and tested using Raspberry Pi devices as a base station, temperature sensors as a node and xively.com as a cloud. Users use data for decision purpose or business purposes from xively.com using internet.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1409.1412 by other author

Traffic eavesdropping based scheme to deliver time-sensitive data in sensor networks

Due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels, neighbouring sensor nodes may overhear packets transmissions from each other even if they are not the intended recipients of these transmissions. This redundant packet reception leads to unnecessary expenditure of battery energy of the recipients. Particularly in highly dense sensor networks, overhearing or eavesdropping overheads can constitute a significant fraction of the total energy consumption. Since overhearing of wireless traffic is unavoidable and sometimes essential, a new distributed energy efficient scheme is proposed in this paper. This new scheme exploits the inevitable overhearing effect as an effective approach in order to collect the required information to perform energy efficient delivery for data aggregation. Based on this approach, the proposed scheme achieves moderate energy consumption and high packet delivery rate notwithstanding the occurrence of high link failure rates. The performance of the proposed scheme is experimentally investigated a testbed of TelosB motes in addition to ns-2 simulations to validate the performed experiments on large-scale network

Energy Sharing for Multiple Sensor Nodes with Finite Buffers

We consider the problem of finding optimal energy sharing policies that maximize the network performance of a system comprising of multiple sensor nodes and a single energy harvesting (EH) source. Sensor nodes periodically sense the random field and generate data, which is stored in the corresponding data queues. The EH source harnesses energy from ambient energy sources and the generated energy is stored in an energy buffer. Sensor nodes receive energy for data transmission from the EH source. The EH source has to efficiently share the stored energy among the nodes in order to minimize the long-run average delay in data transmission. We formulate the problem of energy sharing between the nodes in the framework of average cost infinite-horizon Markov decision processes (MDPs). We develop efficient energy sharing algorithms, namely Q-learning algorithm with exploration mechanisms based on the $\epsilon$-greedy method as well as upper confidence bound (UCB). We extend these algorithms by incorporating state and action space aggregation to tackle state-action space explosion in the MDP. We also develop a cross entropy based method that incorporates policy parameterization in order to find near optimal energy sharing policies. Through simulations, we show that our algorithms yield energy sharing policies that outperform the heuristic greedy method.Comment: 38 pages, 10 figure

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing