Concurrent Transmissions for Multi-hop Bluetooth 5

Bluetooth is an omnipresent communication technology, available on billions of connected devices today.While it has been traditionally limited to peer-to-peer and star network topology, the recent Bluetooth 5 standard introduces new operating modes to allow for increased reliability and Bluetooth Mesh supports multi-hop networking based on message flooding.In this paper, we present BlueFlood.It adapts concurrent transmissions, as introduced by Glossy, to Bluetooth.The result is fast and efficient network-wide data dissemination in multi-hop Bluetooth networks.Moreover, we show that BlueFlood floods can be reliably received by off-the-shelf Bluetooth devices such as smart phones, opening new applications of concurrent transmissions and seamless integration with existing technologies. We present an in-depth experimental feasibility study of concurrent transmissions over Bluetooth PHY in a controlled environment.Further, we build a small-scale testbed where we evaluate BlueFlood in real-world settings of a residential environment.We show that\ua0BlueFlood achieves 99% end-to-end delivery ratio in multi-hop networks with a duty cycle of 0.13% for 1-second intervals

Atomic-SDN: Is Synchronous Flooding the Solution to Software-Defined Networking in IoT?

The adoption of Software Defined Networking (SDN) within traditional networks has provided operators the ability to manage diverse resources and easily reconfigure networks as requirements change. Recent research has extended this concept to IEEE 802.15.4 low-power wireless networks, which form a key component of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, the multiple traffic patterns necessary for SDN control makes it difficult to apply this approach to these highly challenging environments. This paper presents Atomic-SDN, a highly reliable and low-latency solution for SDN in low-power wireless. Atomic-SDN introduces a novel Synchronous Flooding (SF) architecture capable of dynamically configuring SF protocols to satisfy complex SDN control requirements, and draws from the authors' previous experiences in the IEEE EWSN Dependability Competition: where SF solutions have consistently outperformed other entries. Using this approach, Atomic-SDN presents considerable performance gains over other SDN implementations for low-power IoT networks. We evaluate Atomic-SDN through simulation and experimentation, and show how utilizing SF techniques provides latency and reliability guarantees to SDN control operations as the local mesh scales. We compare Atomic-SDN against other SDN implementations based on the IEEE 802.15.4 network stack, and establish that Atomic-SDN improves SDN control by orders-of-magnitude across latency, reliability, and energy-efficiency metrics

A critical analysis of research potential, challenges and future directives in industrial wireless sensor networks

In recent years, Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) have emerged as an important research theme with applications spanning a wide range of industries including automation, monitoring, process control, feedback systems and automotive. Wide scope of IWSNs applications ranging from small production units, large oil and gas industries to nuclear fission control, enables a fast-paced research in this field. Though IWSNs offer advantages of low cost, flexibility, scalability, self-healing, easy deployment and reformation, yet they pose certain limitations on available potential and introduce challenges on multiple fronts due to their susceptibility to highly complex and uncertain industrial environments. In this paper a detailed discussion on design objectives, challenges and solutions, for IWSNs, are presented. A careful evaluation of industrial systems, deadlines and possible hazards in industrial atmosphere are discussed. The paper also presents a thorough review of the existing standards and industrial protocols and gives a critical evaluation of potential of these standards and protocols along with a detailed discussion on available hardware platforms, specific industrial energy harvesting techniques and their capabilities. The paper lists main service providers for IWSNs solutions and gives insight of future trends and research gaps in the field of IWSNs

A Time Synchronized Multi-Hop Mesh Network with Crystal-Free Nodes

In this work we propose and demonstrate a protocol for a time synchronized channel hopping mesh network for wireless transceivers that use exclusively imprecise and inaccurate on-chip oscillators. This protocol is built on an IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer radio that enables interoperability with protocols such as 6TiSCH or Thread. A calibration-bootstrapped multi-hop mesh network is demonstrated with a single crystal-enabled node acting as the root. The protocol is designed to create a multi-hop mesh while compensating noisy and drifting oscillators and timers. With a 4 s synchronization period, an experimental implementation of the network maintains, in the worst case, 1.8 ms 3σ absolute time synchronization and 820 µs 3σ hop-to-hop synchronization across four hops, under ambient environmental conditions. The resistance to environmental variation is tested by varying one node\u27s supply voltage. With time and frequency feedback from received packets, the node maintains this synchronization with a supply variation of 2.5 mV/s, which is equivalent to a temperature variation of 10°C/min with a packet rate of 0.5 Hz

Performance measurements of Bluetooth 5 technique under interference

Abstract. This thesis focuses on experimental performance of the Bluetooth 5 technology and compares results with the previous version. Bluetooth technology, institute of electrical and electronics engineers (IEEE) Std. 802.15.4, and other techniques share the same unlicensed 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) spectrum. Various technologies are operating in the same frequency band, and if the channel utilized by these technologies overlap, end in cross-technology interference (CTI). Measurements have been performed in indoor scenario and ZigBee nodes were used as an interference. Performance output of the Bluetooth 5 is compared to a previous release Bluetooth low energy (BLE) 4 which is currently one of the popular technologies in commercial wireless devices and expected to be even more widespread in the future. This new Bluetooth technology has featured increased data rate, low power consumption, longer range, higher broadcasting capacity, and improved coexistence with other wireless technologies operating in the same frequency band. The main goal of this work was to evaluate the experimental communication range and throughput of the BLE 5 coded version under interference. Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 chipset has been used for measurements and result shows the practical communication range and throughput of BLE 5 coded version under interference. In this work, with error correction coding, one-third BLE link gain was achieved when considering packet error rate (PER) less than 10%. In addition, ZigBee interference was found to be very harmful for the Bluetooth communication when operating in the same frequency band

Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications

This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Physiological Measurement. The publisher is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01

Frequency hopping in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are nowadays being used to collectively gather and spread information in different kinds of applications, for military, civilian, environmental as well as commercial purposes. Therefore the proper functioning of WSNs under different kinds of environmental conditions, especially hostile environments, is a must and a lot of research currently ongoing. The problems related to the initialization and deployment of WSNs under harsh and resource limited conditions are investigated in this thesis. Frequency hopping (FH) is a spread spectrum technique in which multiple channels are used, or hoped, for communications across the network. This mitigates the worst effects of interference with frequency agile communication systems rather than by brute force approaches. FH is a promising technique for achieving the coexistence of sensor networks with other currently existing wireless systems, and it is successful within the somewhat limited computational capabilities of the sensor nodes hardware radios. In this thesis, a FH scheme for WSNs is implemented for a pair of nodes on an application layer. The merits and demerits of the scheme are studied for different kinds of WSN environments. The implementation has been done using a Sensinode NanoStack, a communication stack for internet protocol (IP) based wireless sensor networks and a Sensinode Devkit, for an IPv6 over low power wireless personal area network (6LoWPAN). The measurements are taken from the developed test bed and channel simulator for different kinds of scenarios. The detailed analysis of the FH scheme is done to determine its usefulness against interference from other wireless systems, especially wireless local area networks (WLANs), and the robustness of the scheme to combat fading or frequency selective fading