An energy scaled and expanded vector-based forwarding scheme for industrial underwater acoustic sensor networks with sink mobility

Industrial Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks (IUASNs) come with intrinsic challenges like long propagation delay, small bandwidth, large energy consumption, three-dimensional deployment, and high deployment and battery replacement cost. Any routing strategy proposed for IUASN must take into account these constraints. The vector based forwarding schemes in literature forward data packets to sink using holding time and location information of the sender, forwarder, and sink nodes. Holding time suppresses data broadcasts; however, it fails to keep energy and delay fairness in the network. To achieve this, we propose an Energy Scaled and Expanded Vector-Based Forwarding (ESEVBF) scheme. ESEVBF uses the residual energy of the node to scale and vector pipeline distance ratio to expand the holding time. Resulting scaled and expanded holding time of all forwarding nodes has a significant difference to avoid multiple forwarding, which reduces energy consumption and energy balancing in the network. If a node has a minimum holding time among its neighbors, it shrinks the holding time and quickly forwards the data packets upstream. The performance of ESEVBF is analyzed through in network scenario with and without node mobility to ensure its effectiveness. Simulation results show that ESEVBF has low energy consumption, reduces forwarded data copies, and less end-to-end delay

Throughput modeling of single hop CSMA networks with non-negligible propagation delay

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We analyze the performance of the CSMA protocol under propagation delays that are comparable with packet transmission times. We propose a semi-Markov model for the 2-node CSMA channel. For the 2-node case, the capacity reduces to 40% of the zero-delay capacity when the one-way propagation delay is 10% of the packet transmission time. We then extend this model and obtain the optimum symmetric probing rate that achieves the maximum network throughput as a function of the average propagation delay, d¯, and the number of nodes sharing the channel, N. The proposed model predicts that the total capacity decreases with d¯−1 as N goes to infinity when all nodes probe the channel at the optimum rate. The optimum probing rate for each node decreases with 1/N and the total optimum probing rate decreases faster than d¯−1 as N goes to infinity. We investigate how the short-term unfairness problem in CSMA worsens as the propagation delay increases and propose a back-off mechanism to mitigate this issue. The theoretical results presented in this paper can be used as a benchmark for the performance improvements provided by algorithms that have already been developed

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

Medium access control, error control and routing in underwater acoustic networks: a discussion on protocol design and implementation

The journey of underwater communication which began from Leonardo’s era took four and a half centuries to find practical applications for military purposes during World War II. However, over the last three decades, underwater acoustic communications witnessed a massive development due to the advancements in the design of underwater communicating peripherals and their supporting protocols. Successively, doors are opened for a wide range of applications to employ in the underwater environment, such as oceanography, pollution monitoring, offshore exploration, disaster prevention, navigation assistance, monitoring, coastal patrol and surveillance. Different applications may have different characteristics and hence, may require different network architectures. For instance, routing protocols designed for unpartitioned multi-hop networks are not suitable for Delay-Tolerant Networks. Furthermore, single-hop networks do not need routing protocols at all. Therefore, before developing a protocol one must study the network architecture properly and design it accordingly. There are several other factors which should also be considered with the network architecture while designing an efficient protocol for underwater networks, such as long propagation delay, limited bandwidth, limited battery power, high bit error rate of the channel and several other adverse properties of the channel, such as, multi-path, fading and refractive behaviors. Moreover, the environment also has an impact on the performance of the protocols designed for underwater networks. Even temperature changes in a single day have an impact on the performance of the protocols. A good protocol designed for any network should consider some or all of these characteristics to achieve better performance. In this thesis, we first discuss the impact of the environment on the performance of MAC and routing protocols. From our investigation, we discover that even temperature changes within a day may affect the sound speed profile and hence, the channel changes and the protocol performance vary. After that we discuss several protocols which are specifically designed for underwater acoustic networks to serve different purposes and for different network architectures. Underwater Selective Repeat (USR) is an error control protocol designed to assure reliable data transmission in the MAC layer. One may suspect that employing an error control technique over a channel which already suffers from long propagation delays is a burden. However, USR utilizes long propagation by transmitting multiple packets in a single RTT using an interlacing technique. After USR, a routing protocol for surveillance networks is discussed where some sensors are laid down at the bottom of the sea and some sinks are placed outside the area. If a sensor detects an asset within its detection range, it announces the presence of intruders by transmitting packets to the sinks. It may happen that the discovered asset is an enemy ship or an enemy submarine which creates noise to jam the network. Therefore, in surveillance networks, it is necessary that the protocols have jamming resistance capabilities. Moreover, since the network supports multiple sinks with similar anycast address, we propose a Jamming Resistance multi-path Multi-Sink Routing Protocol (MSRP) using a source routing technique. However, the problem of source routing is that it suffers from large overhead (every packet includes the whole path information) with respect to other routing techniques, and also suffers from the unidirectional link problem. Therefore, another routing protocol based on a distance vector technique, called Multi-path Routing with Limited Cross-Path Interference (L-CROP) protocol is proposed, which employs a neighbor-aware multi-path discovery algorithm to support low interference multiple paths between each source-destination pair. Following that, another routing protocol is discussed for next generation coastal patrol and surveillance network, called Underwater Delay-Tolerant Network (UDTN) routing where some AUVs carry out the patrolling work of a given area and report to a shore based control-center. Since the area to be patrolled is large, AUVs experience intermittent connectivity. In our proposed protocol, two nodes that understand to be in contact with each other calculate and divide their contact duration equally so that every node gets a fair share of the contact duration to exchange data. Moreover, a probabilistic spray technique is employed to restrict the number of packet transmissions and for error correction a modified version of USR is employed. In the appendix, we discuss a framework which was designed by our research group to realize underwater communication through simulation which is used in most of the simulations in this thesis, called DESERT Underwater (short for DEsign, Simulate, Emulate and Realize Test-beds for Underwater network protocols). It is an underwater extension of the NS-Miracle simulator to support the design and implementation of underwater network protocols. Its creation assists the researchers in to utilizing the same codes designed for the simulator to employ in actual hardware devices and test in the real underwater scenario

A Priority-based Fair Queuing (PFQ) Model for Wireless Healthcare System

Healthcare is a very active research area, primarily due to the increase in the elderly population that leads to increasing number of emergency situations that require urgent actions. In recent years some of wireless networked medical devices were equipped with different sensors to measure and report on vital signs of patient remotely. The most important sensors are Heart Beat Rate (ECG), Pressure and Glucose sensors. However, the strict requirements and real-time nature of medical applications dictate the extreme importance and need for appropriate Quality of Service (QoS), fast and accurate delivery of a patient’s measurements in reliable e-Health ecosystem. As the elderly age and older adult population is increasing (65 years and above) due to the advancement in medicine and medical care in the last two decades; high QoS and reliable e-health ecosystem has become a major challenge in Healthcare especially for patients who require continuous monitoring and attention. Nevertheless, predictions have indicated that elderly population will be approximately 2 billion in developing countries by 2050 where availability of medical staff shall be unable to cope with this growth and emergency cases that need immediate intervention. On the other side, limitations in communication networks capacity, congestions and the humongous increase of devices, applications and IOT using the available communication networks add extra layer of challenges on E-health ecosystem such as time constraints, quality of measurements and signals reaching healthcare centres. Hence this research has tackled the delay and jitter parameters in E-health M2M wireless communication and succeeded in reducing them in comparison to current available models. The novelty of this research has succeeded in developing a new Priority Queuing model ‘’Priority Based-Fair Queuing’’ (PFQ) where a new priority level and concept of ‘’Patient’s Health Record’’ (PHR) has been developed and integrated with the Priority Parameters (PP) values of each sensor to add a second level of priority. The results and data analysis performed on the PFQ model under different scenarios simulating real M2M E-health environment have revealed that the PFQ has outperformed the results obtained from simulating the widely used current models such as First in First Out (FIFO) and Weight Fair Queuing (WFQ). PFQ model has improved transmission of ECG sensor data by decreasing delay and jitter in emergency cases by 83.32% and 75.88% respectively in comparison to FIFO and 46.65% and 60.13% with respect to WFQ model. Similarly, in pressure sensor the improvements were 82.41% and 71.5% and 68.43% and 73.36% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. Data transmission were also improved in the Glucose sensor by 80.85% and 64.7% and 92.1% and 83.17% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. However, non-emergency cases data transmission using PFQ model was negatively impacted and scored higher rates than FIFO and WFQ since PFQ tends to give higher priority to emergency cases. Thus, a derivative from the PFQ model has been developed to create a new version namely “Priority Based-Fair Queuing-Tolerated Delay” (PFQ-TD) to balance the data transmission between emergency and non-emergency cases where tolerated delay in emergency cases has been considered. PFQ-TD has succeeded in balancing fairly this issue and reducing the total average delay and jitter of emergency and non-emergency cases in all sensors and keep them within the acceptable allowable standards. PFQ-TD has improved the overall average delay and jitter in emergency and non-emergency cases among all sensors by 41% and 84% respectively in comparison to PFQ model

From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications