The Beauty of the Commons: Optimal Load Sharing by Base Station Hopping in Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), the base station (BS) is a critical sensor node whose failure causes severe data losses. Deploying multiple fixed BSs improves the robustness, yet requires all BSs to be installed with large batteries and large energy-harvesting devices due to the high energy consumption of BSs. In this paper, we propose a scheme to coordinate the multiple deployed BSs such that the energy supplies required by individual BSs can be substantially reduced. In this scheme, only one BS is selected to be active at a time and the other BSs act as regular sensor nodes. We first present the basic architecture of our system, including how we keep the network running with only one active BS and how we manage the handover of the role of the active BS. Then, we propose an algorithm for adaptively selecting the active BS under the spatial and temporal variations of energy resources. This algorithm is simple to implement but is also asymptotically optimal under mild conditions. Finally, by running simulations and real experiments on an outdoor testbed, we verify that the proposed scheme is energy-efficient, has low communication overhead and reacts rapidly to network changes

Maximizing the Probability of Delivery of Multipoint Relay Broadcast Protocol in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks with a Realistic Physical Layer

It is now commonly accepted that the unit disk graph used to model the physical layer in wireless networks does not reflect real radio transmissions, and that the lognormal shadowing model better suits to experimental simulations. Previous work on realistic scenarios focused on unicast, while broadcast requirements are fundamentally different and cannot be derived from unicast case. Therefore, broadcast protocols must be adapted in order to still be efficient under realistic assumptions. In this paper, we study the well-known multipoint relay protocol (MPR). In the latter, each node has to choose a set of neighbors to act as relays in order to cover the whole 2-hop neighborhood. We give experimental results showing that the original method provided to select the set of relays does not give good results with the realistic model. We also provide three new heuristics in replacement and their performances which demonstrate that they better suit to the considered model. The first one maximizes the probability of correct reception between the node and the considered relays multiplied by their coverage in the 2-hop neighborhood. The second one replaces the coverage by the average of the probabilities of correct reception between the considered neighbor and the 2-hop neighbors it covers. Finally, the third heuristic keeps the same concept as the second one, but tries to maximize the coverage level of the 2-hop neighborhood: 2-hop neighbors are still being considered as uncovered while their coverage level is not higher than a given coverage threshold, many neighbors may thus be selected to cover the same 2-hop neighbors

MFACE: A Multicast Backbone-Assisted Face Traversal Algorithm for Arbitrary Planar Ad Hoc and Sensor Network Topologies

Face is a well-known localized routing protocol for ad hoc and sensor networks which guarantees delivery of the message as long as a path exists between the source and the destination. This is achieved by employing a left/right hand rule to route the message along the faces of a planar topology. Although face was developed for the unicast case, it has recently been used in combination with multicasting protocols, where there are multiple destinations. Some of the proposed solutions handle each destination separately and lead thus to increased energy consumption. Extensions of face recovery to the multicast case described so far are either limited to certain planar graphs or do not provide delivery guarantees. A recently described scheme employs multicast face recovery based on a so called multicast backbone. A multicast backbone is a Euclidean spanning tree which contains at least the source and the destination nodes. The idea of backbone assisted routing it to follow the edges of the backbone in order to deliver a multicast message to all spanned destination nodes. The existing backbone face routing scheme is however limited to a certain planar graph type and a certain backbone construction. One of the key aspects of the multicast face algorithm MFACE we propose in this work is that it may be applied on top of any planar topology. Moreover, our solution may be used as a generic framework since it is able to work with any arbitrary multicast backbone. In MFACE, any edge of the backbone originated at the source node will generate a new copy of the message which will be routed toward the set of destination nodes spanned by the corresponding edge. Whenever the message arrives at a face edge intersected by a backbone edge different from the initial edge, the message is split into two copies, both handling a disjoint subset of the multicast destinations which are defined by splitting the multicast backbone at that intersection point

Maximizing the Delivery of MPR Broadcasting Under Realistic Physical Layer Assumptions

It is now commonly accepted that the unit disk graph used to model the physical layer in wireless networks does not reflect real radio transmissions, and that a more realistic model should be considered for experimental simulations. Previous work on realistic scenarios has been focused on unicast, however broadcast requirements are fundamentally different and cannot be derived from the unicast case. Therefore, the broadcast protocols must be adapted in order to still be efficient under realistic assumptions. In this paper, we study the well-known multipoint relay broadcast protocol (MPR), in which each node has to choose a set of 1-hop neighbors to act as relays in order to cover the whole 2-hop neighborhood. We give experimental results showing that the original strategy used to select these multipoint relays does not suit a realistic model. On the basis of these results, we propose new selection strategies solely based on link quality. One of the key aspects of our solutions is that our strategies do not require any additional hardware and may be implemented at the application layer, which is particularly relevant to the context of ad hoc and sensor networks where energy savings are mandatory. We finally provide new experimental results that demonstrate the superiority of our strategies under realistic physical assumption

Localized Broadcast Incremental Power Protocol for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks.

As broadcasting is widely used for miscellaneous maintenance operations in wireless ad hoc networks, where energy is a scarce resource, an efficient broadcasting protocol is of prime importance. One of the best known algorithm, named BIP (Broadcast Incremental Power), constructs a spanning tree rooted at a given node. This protocol offers very good results in terms of energy savings, but its computation is unfortunately centralized, as the source node needs to know the entire topology of the network to compute the tree. Many localized protocols have since been proposed, but none of them has ever reached the performances of BIP. Even distributed versions of the latter have been proposed, but they require a huge transmission overhead for information exchange and thus waste energy savings obtained thanks to the efficiency of the tree. In this paper, we propose and analyze a localized version of this protocol. In our method, each node is aware of the position of all the hosts in the set of its 2-hop neighborhood and compute the BIP tree on this set, based on information provided by the node from which it got the packet. That is, a tree is incrementally built thanks to information passed from node to node in the broadcast packet. Only the source node computes an initially empty tree to initiate the process. We also provide experimental results showing that this new protocol has performances very close to other good ones for low densities, and is very energy-efficient for higher densities with performances that equal the ones of BIP

Optimal Transmission Radius for Energy Efficient Broadcasting Protocols in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

International audienceWe investigate the problem of minimum energy broadcasting in ad hoc networks where nodes have capability to adjust their transmission range. The minimal transmission energy needed for correct reception by neighbor at distance r is proportional to r^alpha + c_e, alpha and c_e being two environment-dependent constants. We demonstrate the existence of an optimal transmission radius, computed with a hexagonal tiling of the network area, that minimizes the total power consumption for a broadcasting task. This theoretically computed value is experimentally confirmed. The existing localized protocols are inferior to existing centralized protocols for dense networks. We present two localized broadcasting protocols, based on derived 'target' radius, that remain competitive for all network densities. The first one, TR-LBOP, computes the minimal radius needed for connectivity and increases it up to the target one after having applied a neighbor elimination scheme on a reduced subset of direct neighbors. In the second one, TR-DS, each node first considers only neighbors whose distance is no greater than the target radius (which depends on the power consumption model used), and neighbors in a localized connected topological structure such as RNG or LMST. Then, a connected dominating set is constructed using this subgraph. Nodes not selected for the set may be sent to sleep mode. Nodes in selected dominating set apply TR-LBOP. This protocol is the first one to consider both activity scheduling and minimum energy consumption as one combined problem. Finally, some experimental results for both protocols are given, as well as comparisons with other existing protocols. Our analysis and protocols remain valid if energy needed for packet receptions is charged

Smaller Connected Dominating Sets in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks based on Coverage by Two-Hop Neighbors

In this paper, we focus on the construction of an efficient dominating set in ad hoc and sensor networks. A set of nodes is said to be dominating if each node is either itself dominant or neighbor of a dominant node. This set can for example be used for broadcasting, so the smaller the set is, the more efficient it is. As a basis for our work, we use a heuristics given by Dai and Wu for constructing such a set and propose an enhanced definition to obtain smaller sets. This approach, in conjunction with the elimination of message overhead by Stojmenovic, has been shown (in recent studies) to be an excellent compromise with respect to a wide range of metrics considered. In our new definition, a node u is not dominant if there exists in its 2-hop neighborhood a connected set of nodes with higher priorities that covers u and its 1-hop neighbors. This new rule uses the exact same level of information required by the original heuristics, only neighbors of nodes and neighbors of neighbors must be known to apply it, but it takes advantage of some knowledge originally not taken into account: 1-hop neighbors can be covered by some 2-hop neighbors. We give the proof that the set obtained with this new definition is a subset of the one obtained with Dai and Wu's heuristics. We also give the proof that our set is always dominating for any graph, and connected for any connected graph. Two versions were considered: with topological and positional information, which differ in whether or not nodes are aware of links between their 2-hop neighbors that are not 1-hop neighbors. An algorithm for applying the concept at each node is described. We finally provide experimental data that demonstrates the superiority of our rule in obtaining smaller dominating sets. A centralized algorithm was used as a benchmark in the comparison. The overhead of the size of connected dominating set was reduced by about 15% with the topological variant and by about 30% with the positional variant of our new definition

Broadcasting in Hybrid Ad Hoc Networks.

In this paper, we consider hybrid ad hoc networks, which are composed of two kinds of nodes, regular ones and nodes with additional capabilities. For example, multi-hop cellular and wireless Internet networks consist of static or mobile nodes, and fixed access points which provide an access to an infrastructure. In such a network, each node may use direct or multihop link to connect to an access point, allowing a greater mobility. The goal of this paper is to provide protocols for broadcasting data in such an environment, by taking advantage of the presence of access points to optimize the broadcast, either from an energy consumption or from a latency point of view. We thus consider known protocols for pure ad hoc networks and adapt them to hybrid ad hoc networks. These protocols are the Blind Flooding, the Neighbor Elimination Scheme, the Multipoint Relay protocol and the generalized Self-Pruning Rule (algorithm that elects some dominant nodes to relay messages). We give some experimental data for these modified protocols to compare them to their original version, so that we are able to emphasize the gain obtained thanks to our proposed modifications

A Turnover based Adaptive HELLO Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

International audienceWe present a turnover based adaptive HELLO protocol (TAP), which enables nodes in mobile networks to dynamically adjust their HELLO messages frequency depending on the current speed of nodes. To the best of our knowledge, all existing solutions are based on specific assumptions (\eg{} slotted networks) and/or require specific hardware (\eg{} GPS) for speed evaluation. One of the key aspects of our solution is that no additional hardware is required since it does not need this speed information. TAP may be used in any kind of mobile networks that rely on HELLO messages to maintain neighborhood tables and is thus highly relevant in the context of ad hoc and sensor networks. In our solution, each node has to monitor its neighborhood table to count new neighbors whenever a HELLO is sent. This \emph{turnover} is then used to adjust HELLO frequency. To evaluate our solution, we propose a theoretical analysis based on some given assumptions that provides the optimal turnover when these assumptions hold. Our experimental results demonstrate that when this optimal value is used as the targeted turnover in TAP, the HELLO frequency is correctly adjusted and provides a good accuracy with regards to the neighborhood tables

Localized Minimum Spanning Tree Based Multicast Routing with Energy-Efficient Guaranteed Delivery in Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

We present a minimum spanning tree based energy aware multicast protocol (MSTEAM), which is a localized geographic multicast routing scheme designed for ad hoc and sensor networks. It uses locally-built minimum spanning trees (MST) as an efficient approximation of the optimal multicasting backbone. Using a MST is highly relevant in the context of dynamic wireless networks since its computation has a low time complexity (O(n log n)). Moreover, our protocol is fully localized and requires nodes to gather information only on 1-hop neighbors, which is common assumption in existing work. In MSTEAM, a message split occurs when the MST over the current node and the set of destinations has multiple edges originated at the current node. Destinations spanned by each of these edges are grouped together, and for each of these subsets the best neighbor is selected as the next hop. This selection is based on a cost over progress metric, where the progress is approximated by subtracting the weight of the MST over a given neighbor and the subset of destinations to the weight of the MST over the current node and the subset of destinations. Since such greedy localized scheme may lead the message to a void area (i.e., there is no neighbor providing positive progress toward the destinations), we also propose a completely new multicast generalization of the well-know face recovery mechanism. We provide a theoretical analysis proving that MSTEAM is loop-free and always achieves delivery of the multicast message, as long as a path exists between the source node and the destinations. Our experimental results demonstrate that MSTEAM is highly energy-efficient, outperforms the best existing localized multicast scheme and is almost as efficient as a centralized scheme in high densities