Energy-efficient data acquisition for accurate signal estimation in wireless sensor networks

Long-term monitoring of an environment is a fundamental requirement for most wireless sensor networks. Owing to the fact that the sensor nodes have limited energy budget, prolonging their lifetime is essential in order to permit long-term monitoring. Furthermore, many applications require sensor nodes to obtain an accurate estimation of a point-source signal (for example, an animal call or seismic activity). Commonly, multiple sensor nodes simultaneously sample and then cooperate to estimate the event signal. The selection of cooperation nodes is important to reduce the estimation error while conserving the network’s energy. In this paper, we present a novel method for sensor data acquisition and signal estimation, which considers estimation accuracy, energy conservation, and energy balance. The method, using a concept of ‘virtual clusters,’ forms groups of sensor nodes with the same spatial and temporal properties. Two algorithms are used to provide functionality. The ‘distributed formation’ algorithm automatically forms and classifies the virtual clusters. The ‘round robin sample scheme’ schedules the virtual clusters to sample the event signals in turn. The estimation error and the energy consumption of the method, when used with a generalized sensing model, are evaluated through analysis and simulation. The results show that this method can achieve an improved signal estimation while reducing and balancing energy consumption

A survey on energy efficient techniques in wireless sensor networks

International audienceThe myriad of potential applications supported by wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has generated much interest from the research community. Various applications range from small size low industrial monitoring to large scale energy constrained environmental monitoring. In all cases, an operational network is required to fulfill the application missions. In addition, energy consumption of nodes is a great challenge in order to maximize network lifetime. Unlike other networks, it can be hazardous, very expensive or even impossible to charge or replace exhausted batteries due to the hostile nature of environment. Researchers are invited to design energy efficient protocols while achieving the desired network operations. This paper focuses on different techniques to reduce the consumption of the limited energy budget of sensor nodes. After having identified the reasons of energy waste in WSNs, we classify energy efficient techniques into five classes, namely data reduction, control reduction, energy efficient routing, duty cycling and topology control. We then detail each of them, presenting subdivisions and giving many examples. We conclude by a recapitulative table

Control-data separation architecture for cellular radio access networks: a survey and outlook

Conventional cellular systems are designed to ensure ubiquitous coverage with an always present wireless channel irrespective of the spatial and temporal demand of service. This approach raises several problems due to the tight coupling between network and data access points, as well as the paradigm shift towards data-oriented services, heterogeneous deployments and network densification. A logical separation between control and data planes is seen as a promising solution that could overcome these issues, by providing data services under the umbrella of a coverage layer. This article presents a holistic survey of existing literature on the control-data separation architecture (CDSA) for cellular radio access networks. As a starting point, we discuss the fundamentals, concepts, and general structure of the CDSA. Then, we point out limitations of the conventional architecture in futuristic deployment scenarios. In addition, we present and critically discuss the work that has been done to investigate potential benefits of the CDSA, as well as its technical challenges and enabling technologies. Finally, an overview of standardisation proposals related to this research vision is provided

Topology Design and Delay Control for Communication Networks in Smart Grid

Stability is a critical concern in the design and maintenance of power systems. Different approaches have been proposed for the analysis of power grid stability in various scenarios depending on small or large perturbations and the speed of the phenomenon of interest. In this work, we consider the power grid as a group of flocking birds, as synchronization is the key issue in both contexts. The framework of partial difference equation (PdE) is used to analyze the system stability, when designing the communication network of the power grid network for conveying measurements between different power stations. Both the cases where communication network delay is negligible and non-negligible are studied here. The communication network design problem is formulated as an optimization problem under the consideration of a stable power grid. Corresponding optimization algorithms are designed to solve the problem. To convey measurements of the power network, wireless sensor networks is adopted, for its non-invasive and easy deployment properties. Periodic sleep scheduling is adopted to effectively save energy for the wireless sensor networks. To provide a controllable end-to-end delay for the communication networks, a dynamic duty cycle control approach is designed, featuring a single-hop delay controller based on the well known feedback control theory. The delay control approach also features a queuing delay adaptation scheme that adapts the duty cycle of each node to unpredictable packet rates, as well as a novel energy balancing approach that extends the network lifetime by dynamically adjusting the delay requirement allocated to each hop

An artificial intelligence based quorum system for the improvement of the lifespan of sensor networks.

Artificial Intelligence-based Quorum systems are used to solve the energy crisis in real-time wireless sensor networks. They tend to improve the coverage, connectivity, latency, and lifespan of the networks where millions of sensor nodes need to be deployed in a smart grid system. The reality is that sensors may consume more power and reduce the lifetime of the network. This paper proposes a quorum-based grid system where the number of sensors in the quorum is increased without actually increasing quorums themselves, leading to improvements in throughput and latency by 14.23%. The proposed artificial intelligence scheme reduces the network latency due to an increase in time slots over conventional algorithms previously proposed. Secondly, energy consumption is reduced by weighted load balancing, improving the network’s actual lifespan. Our experimental results show that the coverage rate is increased on an average of 11% over the conventional Coverage Contribution Area (CCA), Partial Coverage with Learning Automata (PCLA), and Probabilistic Coverage Protocol (PCP) protocols respectively

Clustering algorithms for sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks to improve energy efficiency

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 161-172).Many clustering algorithms have been proposed to improve energy efficiency of ad hoc networks as this is one primary challenge in ad hoc networks. The design of these clustering algorithms in sensor networks is different from that in mobile ad hoc networks in accordance with their specific characteristics and application purposes. A typical sensor network, which consists of stationary sensor nodes, usually has a data sink because of the limitation on processing capability of sensor nodes. The data traffic of the entire network is directional towards the sink. This directional traffic burdens the nodes/clusters differently according to their distance to the sink. Most clustering algorithms assign a similar number of nodes to each cluster to balance the burden of the clusters without considering the directional data traffic. They thus fail to maximize network lifetime. This dissertation proposes two clustering algorithms. These consider the directional data traffic in order to improve energy efficiency of homogeneous sensor networks with identical sensor nodes and uniform node distribution. One algorithm is for sensor networks with low to medium node density. The other is for sensor networks with high node density. Both algorithms organize the clusters in such a way that the cluster load is proportional to the cluster energy stored, thereby equalizing cluster lifetimes and preventing premature node/cluster death. Furthermore, in a homogeneous sensor network with low to medium node density, the clusterhead is maintained in the central area of the cluster through re-clustering without ripple effect to save more energy. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithms improve both the lifetime of the networks and performance of data being delivered to the sink. A typical mobile ad hoc network, which usually consists of moveable nodes, does not have a data sink. Existing energy-efficient clustering algorithms maintain clusters by periodically broadcasting control messages. In a typical mobile ad hoc network, a greater speed of node usually needs more frequent broadcasting. To efficiently maintain the clusters, the frequency of this periodic broadcasting needs to meet the requirement of the potentially maximum speed of node. When the node speed is low, the unnecessary broadcasting may waste significant energy. Furthermore, some clustering algorithms limit the maximum cluster size to moderate the difference in cluster sizes. Unfortunately, the cluster sizes in these algorithms still experience significant difference. The larger clusters will have higher burdens. Some clustering algorithms restrict the cluster sizes between the maximum and minimum limits. The energy required to maintain these clusters within the maximum and minimum sizes is quite extensive, especially when the nodes are moving quickly. Thus, energy efficiency is not optimized

The Design of Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocols for Energy Efficient and QoS Provision in Wireless Sensor Networks

This thesis work focuses on innovative design of media access control (MAC) protocols in wireless sensor networks (WNSs). The characteristics of the WSN inquire that the network service design considers both energy efficiency and the associated application requirement. However, most existing protocols address only the issue of energy efficiency. In this thesis, a MAC protocol has been proposed (referred to as Q-MAC) that not only minimized the energy consumption in multi-hop WSNs, but also provides Quality of Service (QoS) by differentiating network services based on priority levels prescribed by different applications. The priority levels reflect the state of system resources including residual energy and queue occupancies. Q-MAC contains both intra- and inter- node arbitration mechanisms. The intra-node packet scheduling employs a multiple queuing architectures, and applies a scheduling scheme consisting of packet classification and weighted arbitration. We introduce the Power Conservation MACAW (PC-MACAW), a power-aware scheduling mechanism which, together with the Loosely Prioritized Random Access (LPRA) algorithm, govern the inter-node scheduling. Performance evaluation are conducted between Q-MAC and S-MAC with respect to two performance metrics: energy consumption and average latency. Simulation results indicate Q-MAC achieves comparable performance to that of S-MAC in non-prioritized traffic scenarios. When packets with different priorities are introduced, Q-MAC yields noticeable average latency differentiations between the classes of service, while preserving the same degree of energy consumption as that of S-MAC. Since the high density nature of WSN may introduce heavy traffic load and thus consume large amount of energy for communication, another MAC protocol, referred to as the Deployment-oriented MAC (D-MAC)has been further proposed. D-MAC minimalizes both sensing and communication redundancy by putting majority of redundant nodes into the sleep state. The idea is to establish a sensing and communication backbone covering the whole sensing field with the least sensing and communication redundancy. In specific, we use equal-size rectangular cells to partition the sensing field and chose the size of each cell in a way such that regardless of the actual location within the cell, a node can always sense the whole cell and communicate with all the nodes in neighboring cells. Once the sensing field has been partitioned using these cells, a localized Location-aware Selection Algorithm (LSA) is carried out to pick up only one node within each cell to be active for a fixed amount of period. This selection is energy-oriented, only nodes with a maximum energy will be on and the rest of nodes will be put into the sleep state once the selection process is over. To balance the energy consumption, the selection algorithm is periodically conducted until all the nodes are out of power. Simulation results indicated that D-MAC saves around 80% energy compared to that of S-MAC and Q-MAC, while maintaining 99% coverage. D-MAC is also superior to S-MAC and Q-MAC in terms of average latency. However, the use of GPS in D-MAC in identifying the nodes within the same cell, would cause extra cost and complexity for the design of sensor nodes

A Survey of System Architecture Requirements for Health Care-Based Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have emerged as a viable technology for a vast number of applications, including health care applications. To best support these health care applications, WSN technology can be adopted for the design of practical Health Care WSNs (HCWSNs) that support the key system architecture requirements of reliable communication, node mobility support, multicast technology, energy efficiency, and the timely delivery of data. Work in the literature mostly focuses on the physical design of the HCWSNs (e.g., wearable sensors, in vivo embedded sensors, et cetera). However, work towards enhancing the communication layers (i.e., routing, medium access control, et cetera) to improve HCWSN performance is largely lacking. In this paper, the information gleaned from an extensive literature survey is shared in an effort to fortify the knowledge base for the communication aspect of HCWSNs. We highlight the major currently existing prototype HCWSNs and also provide the details of their routing protocol characteristics. We also explore the current state of the art in medium access control (MAC) protocols for WSNs, for the purpose of seeking an energy efficient solution that is robust to mobility and delivers data in a timely fashion. Furthermore, we review a number of reliable transport layer protocols, including a network coding based protocol from the literature, that are potentially suitable for delivering end-to-end reliability of data transmitted in HCWSNs. We identify the advantages and disadvantages of the reviewed MAC, routing, and transport layer protocols as they pertain to the design and implementation of a HCWSN. The findings from this literature survey will serve as a useful foundation for designing a reliable HCWSN and also contribute to the development and evaluation of protocols for improving the performance of future HCWSNs. Open issues that required further investigations are highlighted