Joint Routing and STDMA-based Scheduling to Minimize Delays in Grid Wireless Sensor Networks

In this report, we study the issue of delay optimization and energy efficiency in grid wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We focus on STDMA (Spatial Reuse TDMA)) scheduling, where a predefined cycle is repeated, and where each node has fixed transmission opportunities during specific slots (defined by colors). We assume a STDMA algorithm that takes advantage of the regularity of grid topology to also provide a spatially periodic coloring ("tiling" of the same color pattern). In this setting, the key challenges are: 1) minimizing the average routing delay by ordering the slots in the cycle 2) being energy efficient. Our work follows two directions: first, the baseline performance is evaluated when nothing specific is done and the colors are randomly ordered in the STDMA cycle. Then, we propose a solution, ORCHID that deliberately constructs an efficient STDMA schedule. It proceeds in two steps. In the first step, ORCHID starts form a colored grid and builds a hierarchical routing based on these colors. In the second step, ORCHID builds a color ordering, by considering jointly both routing and scheduling so as to ensure that any node will reach a sink in a single STDMA cycle. We study the performance of these solutions by means of simulations and modeling. Results show the excellent performance of ORCHID in terms of delays and energy compared to a shortest path routing that uses the delay as a heuristic. We also present the adaptation of ORCHID to general networks under the SINR interference model

Corporate social responsibility and employer attractiveness: a cross-country analysis of Northern and Southern European job seekers and young professionals

This research paper focuses on the controversy whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) has an influence on employer attractiveness and to what extent the cultural background and individual character traits can act as influencing factors in this relationship. In a first survey a sample of 97 respondents have been asked about their general perceptions towards CSR and their employer choices. A second survey covered 109 participants in an experimental design, testing for statistical significance of CSR practices when choosing an employer. Finally, it can be concluded that CSR can have a significant influence on employer attractiveness in northern and southern Europe and individual character traits can provide an influential factor on the perception on CSR

Understanding, Teaching and Nurturing Creativity: Who Is Going To Do It?

This project investigates what creativity is and whether or not it can be taught. An investigation of the current education system was conducted. Research has shown that our education system is not doing a satisfactory job when it comes to nurturing creativity in students. Our educational systems lack focus in the area of creativity. It is up to the parents to demonstrate and nurture creativity for their children in the home. In order for this to take place, parents must first understand what creativity is, its importance in society and the economy, the fact that it is teachable and learnable and what action they must take in order to teach it and nurture it in their children. In order to get this information to the parents, I’ve created a blog in which I will publish articles. The articles on this blog will educate parents as to what creativity is and how to teach it and nurture it in their children

A comparative study of energy efficient routing strategies based on OLSR

Energy efficiency is a key issue in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. In order to maximize network lifetime, several directions have been explored, among them energy efficient routing. In this report, we show how to extend the standardized OLSR routing protocol, in order to make it energy efficient. To take into account residual node energy, the native selection of multipoint relays of OLSR is changed. Three selection algorithms based on the minimum residual energy are evaluated and the best one is chosen. The OLSR extension we propose, selects the path minimizing the energy consumed in the end-to-end transmission of a flow packet and avoids nodes with low residual energy. As it has been shown that two-path routing is energy efficient, we compare this extension with a two-path source routing strategy (with different links or different nodes). An extensive performance evaluation allows us to conclude that our proposal maximizes both network lifetime and the amount of data delivered

Worst case end-to-end response times for non-preemptive FP/DP* scheduling

In this paper, we are interested in real-time flows requiring quantitative and deterministic Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees. We focus more particularly on two QoS parameters: the worst case end-to-end response time and jitter. We consider a non-preemptive scheduling of flows, called FP/DP*, combining fixed priority and dynamic priority, where the dynamic priority of a flow packet is assigned on the first node visited by the packet in the network. Examples of such a scheduling are FP/FIFO* and FP/EDF*. With any flow is associated a fixed priority denoting the importance of the flow from the user point of view. The arbritation between packets having the same fixed priority is done according to their dynamic priority. A packet can be transmitted only if (i) there is no packet having a higher fixed priority and (ii) there is no packet having a higher dynamic priority. A classical approach used to compute the worst case end-to-end response time is the holistic one, but it leads to pessimistic upper bounds. We propose the trajectory approach to improve the accuracy of the results. Indeed, the trajectory approach only considers worst case scenarios experienced by a flow along its trajectory. It then eliminates scenarios that cannot occur in the network

TRASA: TRaffic Aware Slot Assignment Algorithm in Wireless Sensor Networks

International audienceIn data gathering applications which is a typical application paradigm in wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes may have different traffic demands. Assigning equal channel access to each node may lead to congestion, inefficient use of the bandwidth and decrease of the application performance. In this paper, we prove that the time slot assignment problem is NP-complete when p-hop nodes are not assigned the same slot, with 1 <= p <= h for any strictly positive integer h. We propose TRASA, a TRaffic Aware time Slot Assignment algorithm able to allocate slots to sensors proportionally to their demand. We evaluate the performance of TRASA for different heuristics and prove that it provides an optimized spatial reuse and a minimized cycle length

SERENA: an energy-efficient strategy to schedule nodes activity in wireless ad hoc and sensor networks

In wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, an analysis of the node energy consumption distribution shows that the largest part is due to the time spent in the idle state. This result is at the origin of SERENA, an algorithm to SchEdule RoutEr Nodes Activity. SERENA allows router nodes to sleep, while ensuring end-to-end communication in the wireless network. It is a localized and decentralized algorithm assigning time slots to nodes. Any node stays awake only during its slots and the slots assigned to its neighbors, it sleeps the remaining time. SERENA is based on distributed and localized two-hop coloring. The node's color is then mapped in time slot. Thus, each node is ensured to get at least one time slot, it also gets additional time slots proportionally to its traffic rate. Such a solution adapts to varying traffic rates and supports late node arrivals. A performance evaluation allows us to compare SERENA coloring algorithm with existing ones such as DLF, both in terms of number of colors and complexity. Simulation results show that SERENA enables us to maximize network lifetime while increasing the number of user messages delivered. We quantify the slot reuse and evaluate the impact of the frame size on network performance. We then study how to dimension buffers at the router nodes. Finally, we show how SERENA improves the node energy consumption distribution and maximizes the energy efficiency of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks

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

Optimal Number of Message Transmissions for Probabilistic Guarantee in the IoT

International audienceThe Internet of Things (IoT) is now experiencing its first phase of industrialization. Industrial companies are completing proofs of concept and many of them plan to invest in automation, flexibility and quality of production in their plants. Their use of a wireless network is conditioned upon its ability to meet three Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), namely a maximum acceptable end-to-end latency L, a targeted end-to-end reliability R and a minimum network lifetime T. The IoT network has to guarantee that at least R% of messages generated by sensor nodes are delivered to the sink with a latency ≤ L, whereas the network lifetime is at least equal to T. In this paper, we show how to provide the targeted end-to-end reliability R by means of retransmissions to cope with the unreliability of wireless links. We present two methods to compute the maximum number of transmissions per message required to achieve R. M F air is very easy to compute, whereas M Opt minimizes the total number of transmissions necessary for a message to reach the sink. M F air and M Opt are then integrated into a TSCH network with a load-based scheduler to evaluate the three KPIs on a generic data-gathering application. We first consider a toy example with eight nodes where the maximum number of transmissions M axT rans is tuned per link and per flow. Finally, a network of 50 nodes, representative of real network deployments, is evaluated assuming M axT rans is fixed. For both TSCH networks, we show that M Opt provides a better reliability and a longer lifetime than M F air, which provides a shorter average end-to-end latency. M Opt provides more predictable end-to-end performances than Kausa, a KPI-aware, state-of-the-art scheduler