8,053 research outputs found
Research on Wireless Multi-hop Networks: Current State and Challenges
Wireless multi-hop networks, in various forms and under various names, are
being increasingly used in military and civilian applications. Studying
connectivity and capacity of these networks is an important problem. The
scaling behavior of connectivity and capacity when the network becomes
sufficiently large is of particular interest. In this position paper, we
briefly overview recent development and discuss research challenges and
opportunities in the area, with a focus on the network connectivity.Comment: invited position paper to International Conference on Computing,
Networking and Communications, Hawaii, USA, 201
Extremal Properties of Three Dimensional Sensor Networks with Applications
In this paper, we analyze various critical transmitting/sensing ranges for
connectivity and coverage in three-dimensional sensor networks. As in other
large-scale complex systems, many global parameters of sensor networks undergo
phase transitions: For a given property of the network, there is a critical
threshold, corresponding to the minimum amount of the communication effort or
power expenditure by individual nodes, above (resp. below) which the property
exists with high (resp. a low) probability. For sensor networks, properties of
interest include simple and multiple degrees of connectivity/coverage. First,
we investigate the network topology according to the region of deployment, the
number of deployed sensors and their transmitting/sensing ranges. More
specifically, we consider the following problems: Assume that nodes, each
capable of sensing events within a radius of , are randomly and uniformly
distributed in a 3-dimensional region of volume , how large
must the sensing range be to ensure a given degree of coverage of the region to
monitor? For a given transmission range, what is the minimum (resp. maximum)
degree of the network? What is then the typical hop-diameter of the underlying
network? Next, we show how these results affect algorithmic aspects of the
network by designing specific distributed protocols for sensor networks
A Statistically Modelling Method for Performance Limits in Sensor Localization
In this paper, we study performance limits of sensor localization from a
novel perspective. Specifically, we consider the Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB)
in single-hop sensor localization using measurements from received signal
strength (RSS), time of arrival (TOA) and bearing, respectively, but
differently from the existing work, we statistically analyze the trace of the
associated CRLB matrix (i.e. as a scalar metric for performance limits of
sensor localization) by assuming anchor locations are random. By the Central
Limit Theorems for -statistics, we show that as the number of the anchors
increases, this scalar metric is asymptotically normal in the RSS/bearing case,
and converges to a random variable which is an affine transformation of a
chi-square random variable of degree 2 in the TOA case. Moreover, we provide
formulas quantitatively describing the relationship among the mean and standard
deviation of the scalar metric, the number of the anchors, the parameters of
communication channels, the noise statistics in measurements and the spatial
distribution of the anchors. These formulas, though asymptotic in the number of
the anchors, in many cases turn out to be remarkably accurate in predicting
performance limits, even if the number is small. Simulations are carried out to
confirm our results
Amorphous Placement and Informed Diffusion for Timely Monitoring by Autonomous, Resource-Constrained, Mobile Sensors
Personal communication devices are increasingly equipped with sensors for passive monitoring of encounters and surroundings. We envision the emergence of services that enable a community of mobile users carrying such resource-limited devices to query such information at remote locations in the field in which they collectively roam. One approach to implement such a service is directed placement and retrieval (DPR), whereby readings/queries about a specific location are routed to a node responsible for that location. In a mobile, potentially sparse setting, where end-to-end paths are unavailable, DPR is not an attractive solution as it would require the use of delay-tolerant (flooding-based store-carry-forward) routing of both readings and queries, which is inappropriate for applications with data freshness constraints, and which is incompatible with stringent device power/memory constraints. Alternatively, we propose the use of amorphous placement and retrieval (APR), in which routing and field monitoring are integrated through the use of a cache management scheme coupled with an informed exchange of cached samples to diffuse sensory data throughout the network, in such a way that a query answer is likely to be found close to the query origin. We argue that knowledge of the distribution of query targets could be used effectively by an informed cache management policy to maximize the utility of collective storage of all devices. Using a simple analytical model, we show that the use of informed cache management is particularly important when the mobility model results in a non-uniform distribution of users over the field. We present results from extensive simulations which show that in sparsely-connected networks, APR is more cost-effective than DPR, that it provides extra resilience to node failure and packet losses, and that its use of informed cache management yields superior performance
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