Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks

In this chapter, we present a literature survey of an emerging, cutting-edge, and multi-disciplinary field of research at the intersection of Robotics and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) which we refer to as Robotic Wireless Sensor Networks (RWSN). We define a RWSN as an autonomous networked multi-robot system that aims to achieve certain sensing goals while meeting and maintaining certain communication performance requirements, through cooperative control, learning and adaptation. While both of the component areas, i.e., Robotics and WSN, are very well-known and well-explored, there exist a whole set of new opportunities and research directions at the intersection of these two fields which are relatively or even completely unexplored. One such example would be the use of a set of robotic routers to set up a temporary communication path between a sender and a receiver that uses the controlled mobility to the advantage of packet routing. We find that there exist only a limited number of articles to be directly categorized as RWSN related works whereas there exist a range of articles in the robotics and the WSN literature that are also relevant to this new field of research. To connect the dots, we first identify the core problems and research trends related to RWSN such as connectivity, localization, routing, and robust flow of information. Next, we classify the existing research on RWSN as well as the relevant state-of-the-arts from robotics and WSN community according to the problems and trends identified in the first step. Lastly, we analyze what is missing in the existing literature, and identify topics that require more research attention in the future

A practical framework for data collection in wireless sensor networks

Optimizing energy consumption for extending the lifetime in wireless sensor networks is of dominant importance. Groups of autonomous robots and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) acting as mobile data collectors are utilized to minimize the energy expenditure of the sensor nodes by approaching the sensors and collecting their buffers via single hop communication, rather than using multihop routing to forward the buffers to the base station. This paper models the sensor network and the mobile collectors as a system-of-systems, and defines all levels and types of interactions. A practical framework that facilitates deploying heterogeneous mobiles without prior knowledge about the sensor network is presented. Realizing the framework is done through simulation experiments and tested against several performance metrics.<br /

Enhancing Energy Efficiency of Wireless Sensor Network through the Design of Energy Efficient Routing Protocol

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is known to be a highly resource constrained class of network where energy consumption is one of the prime concerns. In this research, a cross layer design methodology was adopted to design an energy efficient routing protocol entitled “Position Responsive Routing Protocol” (PRRP). PRRP is designed to minimize energy consumed in each node by (1) reducing the amount of time in which a sensor node is in an idle listening state and (2) reducing the average communication distance over the network. The performance of the proposed PRRP was critically evaluated in the context of network lifetime, throughput, and energy consumption of the network per individual basis and per data packet basis. The research results were analyzed and benchmarked against the well-known LEACH and CELRP protocols. The outcomes show a significant improvement in the WSN in terms of energy efficiency and the overall performance of WSN

Coverage Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks: Review and Future Directions

The coverage problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be generally defined as a measure of how effectively a network field is monitored by its sensor nodes. This problem has attracted a lot of interest over the years and as a result, many coverage protocols were proposed. In this survey, we first propose a taxonomy for classifying coverage protocols in WSNs. Then, we classify the coverage protocols into three categories (i.e. coverage aware deployment protocols, sleep scheduling protocols for flat networks, and cluster-based sleep scheduling protocols) based on the network stage where the coverage is optimized. For each category, relevant protocols are thoroughly reviewed and classified based on the adopted coverage techniques. Finally, we discuss open issues (and recommend future directions to resolve them) associated with the design of realistic coverage protocols. Issues such as realistic sensing models, realistic energy consumption models, realistic connectivity models and sensor localization are covered

Energy Efficient Approach for Collision Avoidance in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the main challenges in the wireless sensor network is to improve the performance of the network by extending the lifetime of the sensor nodes. Excessive packet collisions lead to packet losses and retransmissions, resulting in significant overhead costs and latency which in turn makes a need to design a distributed and scalable time slot allocation. A new proposal is proposed which avoids collisions between packets and also provides increased energy efficiency and further prolong network lifetime, in wireless sensor network