Collaborative Algorithms for Communication

in Wireless Sensor Networks

Tim Nieberg
University of Twente
[email protected]

Stefan Dulman
University of Twente
[email protected]

Paul Havinga
University of Twente
[email protected]

Lodewijk v. Hoesel
University of Twente
[email protected]

Jian Wu
University Twente
[email protected]

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design of the communication in a wireless sensor

network. The resource limitations of a wireless sensor network, especially in
terms of energy, require an integrated, and collaborative approach for the different layers of communication. In particular, energy-efficient solutions for medium
access control, clusterbased routing, and multipath creation and exploitation are
discussed. The proposed MAC protocol is autonomous, decentralized and designed to minimize power consumption. Scheduling of operations, e.g. for the
MAC protocol, is naturally supported by a clustered structure of the network. The
multipath on-demand routing algorithm improves the reliability of data routing.
The approaches taken and presented are designed to work together and support
each other.

Keywords

WSN, MAC, Routing, Clustering

1.

Introduction

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are an emerging field of research which

combines many challenges of modern computer science, wireless communication and mobile computing. WSNs are one of the prime examples of Ambient Intelligence, also known as ubiquitous computing. Ambient systems are
networked embedded systems intimately integrated with the everyday environment and are supporting people in their activities. These systems are quite
different from those of current computer systems, and will have to be based on
radically new architectures and use novel protocols.
Recent advances in sensor technology, low power analog and digital electronics and low-power radio frequency design have enabled the development
of cheap, small, low-power sensor nodes, integrating sensing, processing and
wireless communication capabilities. Embedding millions of sensors into an
environment creates a digital skin or wireless network of sensors. These massively distributed sensor networks, communicate with one another and summarize the immense amount of low-level information to produce data representative of the overall environment. From collaboration between (large) groups
of sensor nodes, intelligent behaviour can emerge that surpasses the limited
capabilities of individual sensor nodes.
Sensor nodes collaborate to be able to cope with the environment: sensor
nodes operate completely wireless, and are able to spontaneously create an
impromptu network, assemble the network themselves, dynamically adapt to
device failure and degradation, manage movement of sensor nodes, and react
to changes in task and network requirements. Despite these dynamic changes
in configuration of the sensor network, critical real-time information must still
be disseminated dynamically from mobile sensor data sources through the selforganising network infrastructure to the applications and services.
Sensor network systems will enhance usability of appliances, and provide
condition-based maintenance in the home. These devices will enable fundamental changes in applications spanning the home, office, clinic, factory, vehicle, metropolitan area, and the global environment. Sensor node technology enables data collection and processing in a variety of situations, for applications, which include environmental monitoring, context-aware personal
assistants (tracking of location, activity, and environment of the user), home
security, machine failure diagnosis, medical monitoring, and surveillance and
monitoring for security.
This paper deals with networking protocols involved in a WSN. We address
all traditional layers like MAC, transport, and routing, but unlike those wellknown variants, we use a more integrated view.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Applications

Data Splitting
(Multipath) Routing
Clustering
EMACs

Dynamic Topology

Figure 1.

1.1

Overview of the Communication in the EYES Network

Outline

In the following section, we introduce the envisioned architecture of a WSN

and identify the typical communication patterns. We address a dynamic WSN
in which some of the nodes are mobile, while others are fixed. These dynamics
are not only due to mobility, but the characteristics of the wireless channel also
include breaking connections and the creation of new links regularly. Throughout this paper, the sensor node prototype as being developed in the European
research project EYES is used as a demonstrative tool. This prototype is introduced in Section 2.3. The lifetime of a WSN is directly linked to the energy
consumption of each node. The sensor nodes are made aware of their energy
consumption by a simple mathematical model presented in Section 2.4.
The following sections will then introduce the major parts of the communication from a bottom-up point of view, following the overview in Figure 1.
Section 3 presents EMACs, the EYES Medium Access Protocol, which
uses various novel mechanisms to reduce energy consumption from the major sources of inefficiency that we have identified in existing schemes.
A clusterbased ad-hoc routing algorithm is discussed in Section 4. The clustering scheme, following a greedy approach to the independent dominating set,
is used to obtain an efficient route discovery process. The trade-offs involved
and some simulation results are stated to show the advantages of the proposed
approach.
The nature of the wireless transmissions and the assumed redundancy in
the WSN allows for multiple, different routes through the network topology.
An approach to more reliable data delivery, using multipath routing and datasplitting is proposed in Section 5.

4
This paper ends with a short discussion on the collaboration and a look
ahead at the future work.

1.2

Related Work

The current MAC designs for wireless sensor networks tackle some of the
problems addressed above. Current MAC protocols can be broadly divided into
contention based and TDMA protocols. TDMA protocols have the advantage
of energy conservation, because the duty cycle of the radio is reduced and there
is less contention-introduced overhead and collisions. However, scalability is
normally not as good as that of a contention-based protocol, for example since
it is not easy to dynamically change its frame length and time slot assignments.
The first step in the reservation and scheduling approaches is to define a
communication infrastructure. The assignment of the channels, TDMA slots,
frequency bands, spread spectrum codes to the different nodes in a way that
avoids collisions is not an easy problem. One way of dealing with this complexity is to form a hierarchical structure with clusters and delegate the synchronization control to the clusterheads like in the LEACH protocol [6]. Here,
issues like cluster membership, rotating clusterheads to prevent early energy
depletion and intra-cluster coordination must be effectively addressed. Supporting mobile nodes is also harder to achieve in a hierarchical structure.
At first glance, the contention-based schemes are completely unsuitable for
the wireless sensor network scenario. The need for constant monitoring of the
channel obviously contradicts the energy efficiency requirement. On the other
hand, these schemes do not require any special synchronization and avoid the
overhead of exchanging reservation and scheduling information.
An example of a hybrid scheme is the so called S-MAC protocol [19] that
combines scheduling and contention with the aim of improving collision avoidance and scalability. The power saving is based on scheduling sleep/listen
cycles between the neighbouring nodes. After the initial scheduling, synchronization packets are used to maintain the inter-node synchronization. When
a node wants to use the channel, it has to contend for the medium. The
scheme used is very similar to 802.11 with physical and virtual carrier sense
and RTS/CTS exchange to combat the hidden node problem. The overhearing
control is achieved by putting to sleep all immediate neighbours of the sender
and the receiver after receiving an RTS or CTS packet.
A WSN does not form a fully connected network, requiring multi-hop routing strategies for data to reach its destination [2]. Several different routing algorithms for WSNs have been studied until now, e.g. the Temporally Ordered
Routing Algorithm [15], Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), [9], and Directed
Diffusion [8]. However, these algorithms are sensitive to communication failures. To diminish the effects of node failures, multipath routing schemes have

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

been developed on top of these algorithms, e.g. [5, 12], or as stand-alone algorithms as [10], but the resource demands are quite high.

2.

Wireless Sensor Networks

In this Section, we briefly introduce wireless sensor networks and some

characteristics of these. In particular, the envisioned logical architecture, typical communication patterns, and a prototype are presented. Additionally, as
energy plays a key-role in WSNs, we give a mathematical model used to estimate the energy consumption of a node.

2.1

Architecture

In our approach, we define two distinct key system layers of abstraction: (1)
the sensor and networking layer, and (2) the distributed services layer. Each
layer provides services that may be spontaneously specified and reconfigured:
the sensor and networking layer contains the sensor nodes (the physical
sensor and wireless transmission modules) and the network protocols.
Ad-hoc routing protocols allow messages to be forwarded through multiple sensor nodes taking into account the dynamic changes of the topology due to, e.g., mobility of nodes and node failures. Communication
protocols must be energy-efficient since sensor nodes have very limited
energy supply.
the distributed services layer contains services for supporting mobile
sensor applications. Distributed services coordinate with each other to
perform decentralized computations and data modifications. There are
two major services. The lookup service supports mobility, instantiation, and reconfiguration. The information service deals with aspects of
collecting data. This service allows vast quantities of data easily and
reliably accessed, manipulated, disseminated, and used in a customized
fashion by applications.
This paper puts the main focus on the networking layer, the distributed services layer has to rely on the communication provided from it. On top of this
architecture, applications can be built using the sensor network and distributed
services.

2.2

Communication in a WSN

The purpose of a wireless sensor network is physical environment monitoring, and providing this information in an appropriate fashion to the applications
in need of this data. Each node will be equipped with one or more sensors,
whose readings are transported via other network nodes to a data sink.

6
Relay Node

4.

Sink
2.

3.
1.

Figure 2.

Sensor Node

WSN Communication Types

In general, two types of nodes are recognized logically: nodes that mainly
transmit their own sensor readings (sensor nodes), and nodes that mainly relay
messages from other nodes (relay nodes). Sensor readings are routed from the
source nodes to the sink via the relay nodes, thus creating a multi-hop topology.
This logical organization implies four types of communications as shown in
Figure 2, that have to be accounted for especially on the lower communication
levels such as the MAC protocol.
1. Sensor node to sensor node communication - This direct type of communication is used for local operations, for example during the clustering
process, or the route creation process
2. Sensor node to relay node communication - Sensor data is transmitted
from a sensor node to a relay node. This type of communication is often
unicast.
3. Relay node to sensor node communication - Requests for data and signaling messages, often multicasts, to reach a subset of the surrounding
nodes at once, are spread by the relay nodes.
4. Relay node to relay node communication - The relay nodes form the
backbone of the network. Communication between these nodes will
mostly be unicast. Note that every node is equipped with a wireless
transceiver and thus is able to perform the duties of a relay node.
For a sensor node, there are two operational modes to fit the possible applications arising from the WSN: 1) active polling; and 2) passive detection and
notification. For a reading of a sensor, the node acting as sink can actively ask
for the information (active polling), or request to be notified when an event is
detected by one of the nodes, e.g. if a pre-determined threshold on a sensor
reading is passed (passive notification).

2.3

EYES Sensor Node Prototype

The EYES project (IST-2001-34734, [4]) is a three year European research

project on self-organizing and collaborative energy-efficient sensor networks.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

The goal of the project is to develop the architecture and the technology, which
enables the creation of a new generation of sensors that can effectively network
together so as to provide a flexible platform for the support of a large variety
of mobile sensor network applications.
In the EYES project, prototype sensor nodes have been developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of our protocols. The processor used in the EYES
sensor node is a MSP-430F149 [7], produced by Texas Instruments. It is a
16-bit processor and it has 60 Kbytes of program memory and 2 Kbytes of
data memory. When running at full speed (5 MHz), the processor consumes
approximately 1.5 mW, but it also has several power saving modes.
The communication function between nodes is realized by a RFM TR1001
hybrid radio transceiver [16] that is very well suited for this kind of application: it has low power consumption and has small size. The TR1001 supports
transmission rates up to 115.2 Kbps. The power consumption during receive is
approximately 14.4 mW, during transmit 16.0 mW, and in sleep mode 15.0 W.
The transmitter output power is maximal 0.75 mW.
From the above can be concluded that the processor can do thousands of
operations before the energy consumptions equals that of the transceiver transmitting one single byte. Hence, throughout this document, we assume that the
energy costs of transceiver are dominant.

2.4

Energy Consumption of a Node

Sensor networks are expected to be left unattended for a long period of time.
Each sensor running on batteries, this requires an approach that explicitly takes
energy into consideration. For this, each node is made aware of its energy
requirements and usage by a model of the energy consumption.
The aim of the model is to predict the current energy state of the battery of
a sensor node based on historical data on the use of the node. The model also
allows for predictions on future energy consumption based on the expected
task to be run in a certain upcoming time interval. The model considers the
three main components of a sensor node that reduce the energy stored in the
batteries: the radio, the processor, and the actual sensing device. We do not
consider a reactivation of the battery by time or external cirsumstances, e.g. by
battery replacement or harvesting of solar energy.
The base of the model for the energy consumption of a component is the
definition of a set S of possible states s 1 , . . . , sk for the component. These
states are defined such that the energy consumtion is given by the sum of the
energy consumption within the states plus the energy needed to switch between different states. We assume that the energy consumption within a state
sj can be measured using a simple index t j , e.g. execution time or number
of instructions. The energy needed to switch between different states can be

8
calculated based on a state transition matrix st, where st ij dentotes the number
of times the component switched from state s i to sj . Let Pj denote the power
needed in state sj for one time unit, and Eij denote the energy consumption
when switching from state si to state sj . The total energy consumption of the
component is given by
Econsumed =

k
X
j=1

tj Pj +

k
X

stij Eij .

i,j=1 i6=j

In the following, we describe the state set S and the indices to measure the
energy consumption within the states of the radio, processor and sensor:
Radio - for the energy consumption, four different states need to be distinguished: off, sleep, receiving, and transmitting. For these four states,
the energy consumption depends on the time the radio has been in this
state. Thus, for the radio, we need to store information the times it has
been in each state and the 4 4 state transition matrix representing the
number of times the radio has switched between the four states.
Processor - in general, four main processor states can be identified: off,
sleep, idle, and active. In sleep mode, the CPU and most internal peripherals are turned off, and can be woken by an external event (interrupt)
only. In idle mode, the CPU is still inactive, but now some peripherals are active, for example the internal clock or timer. Whithin the active
states, the CPU and all peripherals are active. In the active state, multiple
substates may be defined based on clock speeds and voltages.
Sensor - for a simple sensor we assume that only the states on and off
are given , and that the energy consumption within both states can be
measured by time. However, more powerful sensor work in different
states, comparable to the processor, and need to be modeled by more
states.
The energy model for the complete sensor node now consists of the consumption model for the three components, plus two additional indicators for
the battery:
for the battery, the energy state Eold at a time told in the past is given,
for each component, the indices Ij characterizing the energy consumption in the state sj since time told and the state transition matrix st indicating the transitions since time t old are specified.
Based on this information, an estimate of the current energy state of the battery
can be caluclated by substracting from E old the sum of the estimates for each
component since time told .

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

3.

EMACS (EYES-Medium Access Protocol)

This section proposes an energy efficient MAC protocol for wireless sensor
networks (EMACS). WSNs are typically deployed in an ad hoc fashion, with
individual sensor nodes to be in a dormant state for long periods, and then
becoming suddenly active when something is detected (passive notification,
see 2.2). Such applications will thus have long idle periods and can tolerate
some latency. For example, one can imagine a surveillance or monitoring application, which will be vigilant for long periods of time, but largely inactive
until something is detected. For such applications, the lifetime of the sensor
nodes is critical. Once a node becomes active, data will be gathered and processed by the node, and needs to be transferred to the destination with far less
latency and needs more bandwidth than in the dormant state.
Another typical use of a WSN is to have a kind of streaming data, in which
little amounts of data (typically just a few bytes) are transmitted periodically
(for example temperature measurements). The large number of nodes will allow taking advantage of short-range, multi-hop communication to conserve energy, especially when data aggregation is applied. Since the nodes will be deployed casually, and maybe even mobile, nodes must be able to self-configure.
The characteristics of a wireless sensor network motivate the use of a different family of MAC protocols than currently employed for wireless (ad hoc)
networks (such as IEEE 802.11 [14]), in which throughput, latency, and per
node fairness, are more important. Moreover, the network nodes have to operate in a self-organizing ad hoc fashion, since none of the nodes is likely to be
capable of delivering the resources to act as central manager.
For the WSN, we explore a TDMA-based MAC scheme, since code division multiple access (CDMA) or carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) based
protocols imply constant or very frequent listening to the radio channel. This
listening to the channel consumes a large amount of energy which is certainly
not available in the network nodes. The TDMA-based EMACs protocol also
eases the (local) synchronization between nodes. In the next section the TDMA
frame format is discussed.

3.1

Frame format

Time is divided into so called frames and each frame is divided into timeslots (see Figure 3). Each timeslot in a frame can be owned by only one network node. This network node decides what communication should take place
in its timeslot and denies or accepts requests from other nodes.
Each node autonomously selects a timeslot it wants to own. A timeslot is
selected based on the already occupied timeslots as submitted by neighboring nodes. This information includes the known timeslots of the surrounding
nodes of a neighbor, so that information about the second order neighborhood

10
Timeslot
CR

TC

Figure 3.

DATA

CR

TC

DATA

Frame format of the TDMA-based MAC protocol

is respected. The radio signal has already attenuated quite severely at the third
order neighbors, so that timeslots can be reused.
Nodes can ask for data or notify the availability of data for the owner of
the timeslot in the communication request (CR) section. The owner of the slot
transmits its schedule for its data section and broadcasts the above discussed
table in the traffic control (TC) section, which tells to which other TC sections
the node is listening. After the TC section, the transmission of the actual data
packet follows either uplink or downlink. Both CR and TC sections consist of
only a few bytes.
The designed MAC protocol does not confirm received data packets. In this
way the required error control can be decided on in higher protocol layers. This
is quite different from other MAC protocols, which try to reach a certain error
rate guarantee per link. In a wireless sensor network a data packet is relayed
via multiple hops to its destination and on its way data from other nodes will be
added and processed (data aggregation and fusion). The resulting data packet
will become more and more important and more resources like energy are
spent. Hence the error rate guarantees should be adapted to the importance of
the data. Possible ways to deal with unreliable links are presented in the succeeding sections, especially when presenting the data-splitting along multiple
paths.
Collisions can occur in the communication request section. Although we do
not expect a high occurrence of collisions, we incorporate a collision handling
mechanism in the EMACS protocol. When the time slot owner detects a collision, it notifies its neighbor nodes that a collision has occurred. The collided
nodes retransmit their request in the data section after a random, but limited
backoff time. Carrier sense is applied to prevent the distortion of ongoing requests.
Suppose that the nodes transmit on average 50 bytes/s and receive 50 bytes/s,
the expected lifetime of an EYES sensor node will be 570 days using two AA
batteries, capable of delivering 2000 mAh. Although this is already quite good,
the EMACS protocol supports also two low power modes. These are discussed
next.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 11

3.2

Sleeping Modes

Since transmitting and receiving are both very power consuming operations,
the nodes should turn off their transceivers as often as possible. The EMACS
protocol therefore supports two sleep modes of the sensor nodes:
Standby mode: This sleep mode is used when at a certain time no transmissions are expected. The node releases its slot and starts periodically
listening to a TC section of a frame to keep up with the network. When
the node has to transmit some data (event driven sensor node), it can
just fill up a CR section of another network node and agree on the data
transmission, complete it and go back to sleep. It can actively be woken
up by other nodes to participate in communication. Depending on the
communication needs, it will start owning a timeslot.
When we assume that a node transmits on average 50 bytes/s and receives 50 bytes/s, the expected lifetime of the node in standby mode will
be 665 days. But when the node is inactive for long periods of time the
lifetime will increase more rapidly than in standard operation mode.
Dormant mode: This sleep mode is agreed on at higher layers. The sensor node goes to low power mode for an agreed amount of time. Then
it wakes, synchronizes (rediscovers the network) and performs the communication. While in this sleep mode the synchronization with the network will be lost and all communication with the node will be impossible. This sleep mode is especially useful to exploit the redundancy in the
network. In a clustered structure, the controlling instance, i.e. the clusterhead, will usually decide on the sleeping pattern of redundant nodes.

3.3

Ownership of Timeslots

Not every node in the network has to own a timeslot. It is clear that a node
does not own a timeslot when it is in one of the sleep modes since being in a
sleep mode is inherent to not transmitting a TC section every frame. However,
event driven nodes might also not redeem their right to own a timeslot. A
drawback of not owning a timeslot is that the node only being able to receive
multicast messages and not messages directly addressed to it. Transmitting
data to nodes that own a timeslot is not a problem. Other protocol layers in the
network may invoke listening to, or transmitting in a prior agreed (and free or
not owned) data section.
Before a node decides, that it does not want to own a timeslot, it should
check that sufficient TC sections are transmitted by neighbors to keep the network connected and to maintain synchronization. The fact that nodes do not
necessarily need to own a timeslot, eases the scalability of the network and
reduces the power consumption of the nodes.

12

4.

Clustering and Clusterbased Routing

The TDMA-based EMACs protocol relies on several controlling mechanisms, e.g. for the assignment of time slots or for the delegation of sleeping
patterns. In our approach, the controlling mechanisms are achieved using a
clustered structure of the network.
Generally speaking, when dealing with large scale, ad-hoc sensor networks,
clustering offers some benefits. Grouping nodes into clusters controlled by a
designated node, the clusterhead, offers a good framework for the development
of important features like routing and, as seen previously, channel access. In
addition, the hierarchical view of the network achieved by clustering helps to
decrease the complexity of the underlying network, and WSNs are expected to
consist of large amounts of individual nodes.
The clustering scheme creates the clusters based on proximity, i.e. nodes
that are in range of one another are grouped together. For instance, in an inhome scenario, nodes that are in the same room are likely to form cliques,
separated by walls that absorb some of the radio signals and thus representing
natural barriers.

4.1

Clustering Protocol

The clustering approach extends a simple protocol to set up and maintain

a clustered structure of a wireless ad-hoc network by additional procedures
to control the cluster size, taking into account some characteristics of such a
network like link failures due to changes in the topology.
In the clustered structure of the network, the set of clusterheads to control
the nodes within their neighborhood, is created to form an independent set. The
main advantage of this structure comes from the fact that no two clusterheads
can be direct neighbors, thus giving the clusterheads more control. Furthermore, the approach taken assures that the clusterheads also form a dominating
set, so that each node is within transmission range of at least one clusterhead.
The dominating set property is especially important for the MAC protocol as
it is only concerned with nodes in direct transmission range of one another.
In order to get a connected structure, non-clusterhead nodes are designated
as gateways to enable communication between two adjacent clusters. A node
having more than one clusterhead in its direct neighborhood is called a direct
gateway. It associates, however, with one of these as its controlling instance.
A node that cannot communicate directly with a clusterhead of another cluster,
but can do so with a node that is member of a different cluster, is referred to as a
distributed gateway. For a distributed gateway, two non-clusterhead nodes are
always needed to ensure connectivity between their respective clusterheads.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 13

Clusterhead

Gateway

Clustering Association
Figure 4.

Regular Node
Distributed Gateway

Example of Clustered Structure

An example of the clustered structure showing why distributed gateways are

not redundant is given in Figure 4. The network becomes disconnected when
solely relying on the created clustered structure without distributed gateways.
The algorithm executed in each node to decide on its role comes from a
greedy approach to the maximum weight independent set (see cf. [17]). Each
node is given a weight, reflecting its ability to perform the additional duties of
being the controling instance of a cluster, and its residual energy. The weights
are based on the energy model presented in Section 2.4 that allows for estimating the energy that is available in the batteries of a node and also can be used
to estimate the energy requirements of upcoming operations.
Initially, when a node has not determined its role, it is considered undecided.
For making decision of becoming clusterhead, only information about the local neighborhood is needed. The same holds true for the decision of joining a
clusterhead as part of the cluster controled by it. Therefore, the algorithm can
be performed locally in a distributed fashion, e.g. as presented in [1] where
also additional procedures for maintaining the clustered structure in face of
topology changes are given. Additional procedures to control the sizes of the
clusters created by this approach are presented in [13]. Obviously, when the
clusterheads control more evenly sized clusters, the overall energy consumption is distributed more evenly, as well.

4.2

Clusterbased Route Discovery

The protocol to create and maintain the above described clustered structure
of the network comes at the cost of additional control messages, consuming
additional energy. However, the structure allows for limiting the number of

14
transmissions for other services at the networking and other layers. For example, obtaining information for the routing process of messages in the multi-hop
topology can be achieved more energy-efficient. The resulting benefits in terms
of saved transmissions, and thus saved energy, show the advantage of the clustering scheme. In particular, the well known dynamic source routing (DSR,
[9]) is adapted to fit the clustered structure of the network.
In principle, DSR works as follows. Suppose that a network node, the
source, has to send some data packets to another node, the destination. This
usually requires a multi-hop route through the network. For this purpose, each
node stores information about routes previously created in its cache. When
there is no stored information about a route to the destination available at the
source, it initiates a route creation process. The network is flooded with route
request messages. Each node along the process adds itself to a route list contained in the message, and then rebroadcast the request message. When such a
request reaches the destination node, a route reply message is created, relaying
the routing information back to the source, that in return can then send the data
packets. DSR also offers basic routines to cope with disconnected routes.
As every node is within direct transmission range of a clusterhead, and each
clusterhead has knowledge about its members, a route discovery process that
reaches all clusterheads suffices to create a feasible route in the ad hoc network. This holds true for all protocols based on flooding of the network, thus
especially for the route request phase of DSR.
Each node, according to its current role in the clustering scheme, can locally
decide not to rebroadcast a route request message. The decision is taken according to what is known about the route request in respect to the surrounding
clusterheads:
An ordinary node never needs to rebroadcast a route request message
since its presence is already accounted for by its clusterhead.
A clusterhead rebroadcasts such a message according to the same rules
as given by the original DSR. If the destination of the route creation
process is a node in the vicinity of the clusterhead, it initiates the route
reply process and not rebroadcast the query.
A gateway only relays a route request message if it was received from
a neighboring clusterhead. Additionally, if the gateway is a distributed
gateway, and the route request was received from a gateway that is not
part of the nodes own cluster, it notifies its clusterhead by rebroadcasting.
An undecided node, e.g. when it has recently been added to the network
and has not decided on its status when receiving a route request message,

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 15

l

l
m

j
Roriginal =
< ...i j k l... >
Figure 5.

m
i

j
Rnew =
< ...i l... >

Route Reduction at Node l during the Route Reply Process

participates in the route discovery process according to the flooding rules

given by the original DSR.
Newly added nodes to the network, once they are synchronized with their
neighbors, are immediately operational within the network routing process and
do not need to settle on their role within the clustered structure before being
able to communicate with the rest of the network.
During the route creation process, detours may occur as all routes created
pass through the clusterheads of the appropriate nodes. So, in the route reply
phase, when the created routes are reported back to the source, each node does
not relay the route list back to the preceeding entry in the list, but checks wether
it can shorten the list by sending it to a neighboring node that is also in the list,
but is closer to the source of the route. A small example of this reduction
process is given in Figure 5. Suppose that node l has just received the route list
Roriginal from node m. Checking all entries in R original preceeding l together
with its neighbors, node l can prune the entries j and k, and thus only sends
the new route list Rnew onwards to node i.
The routes arriving at the source that have been created by the above process
are comparable in length, i.e. hop-distance, to those created by the classic
DSR. This is also confirmed by the simulations we performed and that are
presented in the following part.
The ability to incorporate undecided nodes into the scheme shows that the
the approach does not represent backbone-based routing as the algorithm does
not rely on a strictly maintained backbone for the routing process.

4.3

Performance

We compared the additional overhead involved with creating and maintaining the clustered structure of the network and the saved messages during the
routing process to the classic DSR on the flat, non-clustered network.
In the simulation setup, the nodes move in the bounded area according to the
random waypoint model. After a certain time interval, a new point in the area

16

Figure 6. Control Overhead and Reliability of the Clusterbased Routing (vs. speed given by
the speed coefficient)

is chosen and the node migrates there with a certain speed. Then, it waits again
and starts moving towards a new chosen point. This model offers a mixture of
static and mobile nodes that can be controlled by time a node remains static at
each of the waypoints.
In Figure 6, these results are presented for a partially mobile network of 50
nodes placed in an area of 3 by 5 times the maximal transmission range. The
waiting time of each node that reached its destination is 5s, and the speed of
the mobile nodes is fixed at the value presented by the speed coefficient at the
horizontal axis in both graphs. The value given at the horizontal axis reflects
the fixed speed of the mobile nodes with respect to their transmission range,
i.e. speed[m/s]
range[m] . For example, consider the EYES wireless sensor prototype:
The transmission ranges of the sensor nodes are at most 25 m in an indoor
environment. Suppose the mobile nodes move with walking speed, say 1 m/s,
the speed coefficient is then 0.04. The left graph presents the average number
of control messages needed to construct a feasible route for a data message
from a randomly chosen node to another random node, i.e. the overall number
of control messages versus the correctly received original data messages. On
average, there are two data messages created every second that are to be routed
through the network. The values for the clusterbased approach also include
the overhead messages for set up and maintenance of the clustered structure.
On the right side, the reliability is given in terms of successfully delivered
messages, that is a feasible route was present, either from cache or created by
the route discovery process, and a data packet was furthermore successfully
routed along this route and reached the destination.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 17

Overall, it can be stated that the clusterbased approach outperforms the classic DSR in both control message overhead and the number of successfully
delivered messages reaching the destination. The effects of increasing mobility are better handled by the clusterbased scheme. Only in networks with low
mobility, i.e. a rather static network, the control overhead of the clustering procedures degrades the overall performance. Note however that the performance
does not drop below the performance of the classic DSR.
Even though the evaluation of the clusterbased scheme uses the route creation process of DSR as a reference point, it can easily be adapted to other
algorithms that rely on flooding.

5.

Multipath Routing

When using multi-hop data delivery, problems arise when intermediate nodes
fail to forward the incoming messages. The resource and energy limited sensor
node has many failure modes, each of which thus decreases the performance
of the whole network. Usually, acknowledgements and retransmissions are implemented to recover the lost data. However, this generates additional traffic
and delays in the network, and it becomes worse when the failure rates of the
nodes increase. Moreover, a mobile node might be unreachable since it moved
out of its region before the message arrived. Retransmissions are useless and
just increase the latency and waste bandwidth and energy.
The reliability of the system can be increased by multipath routing, which
allows the establishment of more than one path between source and destination
and provides an easy mechanism to increase the likelihood of reliable data
delivery by sending multiple copies of data along different paths. Intuitively,
its drawback is the increase of traffic. However we show that this is not always
true, and that using multipath routing combined with some error correction
codes leads to saving energy and bandwidth while even decreasing latency.
In this part, we present a routing mechanism based on multipath routing
and data splitting. The multipath routing algorithm achieves better results if
combined with a clustering algorithm. The multipath routing algorithm runs
on top of a clustering scheme, using the cluster-heads as the regular nodes in
the basic algorithm. This way a combination between the reliability of the
multipath scheme and the energy efficiency of the clustering can be achieved.
Furthermore, designing the multipath routing to work together with a datasplitting algorithm reduces the overall traffic even more.

5.1

Multipath On-Demand Routing

The main goal of the Multipath On-Demand Routing algorithm (MDR) that
we propose is finding multiple paths between the source and the destination
while minimizing the amount of traffic in the network. The algorithm is based

18
Route Request Phase

Source

Destination

n1 order
neighborhood
Route Reply Phase

n order
neighborhood

n+1 order
neighborhood

Source

Destination

Figure 7.

Overview of MDR Phases

on the basic ideas behind the DSR algorithm, and it consists of two phases
presented in Figure 7: the route request and route reply phase.
Route Request phase - The data source starts the route creation process
if it has a data packet to route to a destination and does not have cached
route information to the the destination, the cached routes are not valid
anymore or the cache contains not enough different paths to it. The
source floods the network with a short and fixed length Route Request
message containing the information given in Figure 8.
After receiving a route request, a node checks in its local data structure
whether it has received the route request before using the first three fields
in the message. If not, it creates a new data entry in the local database
to store this information and records the node ID from which the request
was received. For the subsequent messages received, this node only has
to store the ID of the neighbors. It can easily check and mark if the
source of the message is a first order neighbor by the lasthop and ack
fields. The node only forwards the first route request received (additional identical route request messages received are discarded), in which
it substitutes the ack field with the lasthop value and the lasthop with
its own ID. After forwarding the route request message and listening to
the passive acknowledgements, each node knows which neighbors are
closer to the source (further referred as the n-1 neighbor list) and which

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 19

Field
snodeID
dnodeID
floodID
lasthop
ack
Figure 8.

Description
source node ID
destination node ID
route request message ID
ID of the ndoe forwarding this message
ID of the last hop

Fields of the Route Request and Route Reply Message

Field
nexthop
hops
detours
Figure 9.

Description
ID of the node the message is forwarded to
number of hops already traveled
number of detours a message can take
Additional Fields of the Route Reply Message

ones are not (n+1 neighbor list). If the node identifies itself as being the
destination of the message, it initiates the second phase of the algorithm.
Route Reply phase - In this phase, several paths between the destination
and the source are reported to the source. Compared to the route request
message, the route reply message has three additional fields given in
Figure 9.
In the previous phase each intermediate node stored information about
its neighbors that forwarded the route request message, thus the complete path between the source and the destination need not be stored
inside a reply message. When the source receives the first route reply, it
stores the ID of the node that forwarded the message and the path length.
It also sets up a timer to measure the interval that it waits for other reply
messages to come. When this timer expires the data is sent using the
route information obtained thus far.
On receiving a route reply addressed to it, each node will modify the nexthop, ack, hops and detours fields of the message according to the new
parameters before forwarding it to the first neighbor in the n-1 neighbor
list.
If this list is empty and the detours field is not empty, it chooses the first
neighbor in the n neighbor list (respectively n+1 neighbor list) and decreases the allowed detours. On receiving a route reply not addressed to
it, a node searches its own data structure to find the entry corresponding
to the first three fields. If such an entry is found, the forwarding node is
removed from both the n-1 and n+1 neighbor lists.
A node that forwarded a reply has to take care of two more things: first it sets
a flag ensuring that it does not forward any other message for the same route

20
and second, it waits for a passive acknowledgement. If this does not arrive, it
assumes that the node to which it sent the message is no longer available, or
has forwarded a message previously. The respective neighbor is deleted from
the nodes lists. It then tries resending the message to the next neighbor in the
lists, until the lists become empty or the detours field becomes 0. This step of
removing nodes from the list is needed to ensure that the source will receive
only disjoint paths.
A route maintenance is not necessary because the energy needed to maintain
the multiple paths is more than what is required to discover new routes.
MDR reduces the size of the messages considerably when compared to the
original DSR as it uses fixed sizes for them. In fact we are moving the information stored inside the messages to the sensor nodes themselves. The sensor
nodes are responsible to cache where the route request messages came from.
The second group of modifications involves the multiple paths management. In
the original DSR, if the same route request message is received several times
by a node, only the first one is considered and the rest are discarded. MDR considers all these messages and uses this information. Through these changes we
obtain a controlled flooding in the first phase of the algorithm by using small
messages with fixed length, additionally reduced by exploiting the clustered
structure. The second phase also uses small fixed length messages that involve
only a fraction of nodes existent between the source and the destination.

5.2

Data Splitting Across Multiple Paths

Once the multipath route discovery has finished, the data can be sent using this information. Sending the same data packet across multiple disjoint
paths significantly increases the reliability of WSN. However this mechanism
requires large quantities of additional network resources (such as bandwidth,
and most importantly energy).
The method of reducing the amount of traffic by data splitting has been
analysed in detail in [11] and [18]. In [3] we address the trade-off between the
energy and the reliability of this mechanism. We also study the possibility of
integrating this method with a multipath-routing algorithm.
Let us assume the route construction results in k different paths. Some of
these fail in transmitting the data all the way from the source to the destination.
Our approach is to split the data packet into l k parts (hereafter referred to
as subpackets) and to send these subpackets instead of the whole data packet
(see Figure 10). Based on the failure probability of each node in the network,
we can estimate the number of subpackets that will reach the destination.
There exist several fast and simple forward error correction codes that allow
for reconstruction of the original message that has been split up using only a
fraction of the messages at the destination.

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 21

Data Packet

Data +
Redundancy
Figure 10.

Subpackets

Received
Subpackets

Reconstructed
Data Packet

Data Splitting Across Multiple Paths

In order to obtain a predetermined reliability for the data transmission, the

total number of subpackets as well as the redundancy used is a function dependent on the multipath degree and the estimated number of failing paths. As
the multipath degree can change according to the positions of the source and
the destination in the network, each source has to be able to decide on these
parameters before the transmission of the subpackets. The actual value for the
failing probability of a node has to be obtained empirically or by using a path
rating algorithm.

5.3

Performance of MDR and Data-Splitting

In Figure 11, we show the comparisons between the classic DSR and MDR
using the same simulation setup as already presented in Section 4.3.
MDR performs better than DSR in terms of reliability independent of the
speed coefficient. For high speed coefficient values, when DSR becomes unusable due to the error rate, MDR still works acceptable. The price for the
increased reliability is paid with an increased number of control messages and
with a higher latency. A closer look not just at the number of control messages,
but at the traffic size, shows that the total amount of MDR traffic compared to
the DSR traffic varies between 4.04:1 for low values of the speed coefficient to
1.02:1 for scenarios with high values of the speed coefficient.
It is interesting to find out that the speed of the nodes has a reduced influence on all the parameters of the algorithm than in the classic DSR. A means
of diminishing the effects of mobility is usually by increasing the transmission range of the nodes. This implies higher energy consumption. By using
multipath routing, this is not necessary.
For the resulting data splitting approach, several simulations have been performed in order to verify the theoretical results. In the simulations we considered that each sensor node has a given failing probability (between 0 and

22

Figure 11.

Comparison MDR - DSR

0.25). The results show that by applying data splitting across the multiple
paths, we substantially reduce the total amount of traffic in the network while
significantly enhancing the reliability and reducing the latency of data delivery.
The possibility to determine values on-demand for the error correction offers a
method to trade-off between the traffic and the desired reliability by adjusting
the parameters accordingly.
Another interesting result that we have obtained was that for each upper
bound of node failing probability there is an optimal number of paths needed,
for which the failed transmission probability gets to a minimum. Increasing
the number of paths, the probability of error also increases. Therefore it is not
always the best approch to use all the available paths given by the MDR, but
only a subset.

6.

Conclusions

Sensor networks may be one of the best examples in which the pervasiveness
of energy efficient design criteria is desirable, due to the inherent resource limitation, which makes energy the most valuable resource. Sensor nodes should
be able to establish self-assembling networks that are incrementally extensible
and dynamically adaptable to mobility of sensor nodes, changes in task and
network requirements, device failure and degradation of sensor nodes. There-

Collaborative Algorithms for Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks 23

fore, each sensor node must be autonomous and capable of organising itself in
the overall community of sensors to perform co-ordinated activities with global
objectives.
All these required capabilities for sensor nodes are not trivial mainly because the sensor nodes are resource poor: they must be deployed spontaneously
to form efficient ad-hoc networks using tiny sensor nodes with limited energy,
computational, storage, and wireless communication capabilities. Because the
nodes are resource poor, and operate in a time-varying environment it is important that all these issues are addressed together. We presented energy efficient
solutions to an integrated approach for wireless communication in a sensor network. We addressed in particular the even more challenging area of a dynamic
topology, and propose solutions which are robust against these dynamics.
The proposed TDMA-based MAC protocol is designed to support the different communication types often used in wireless sensor networks. The protocol
minimizes the utilization of the transceivers of the nodes in order to save energy. The data requests are made efficiently to reduce the bandwidth used in
the network. Latency in the network is reduced by allowing transmissions in
not owned or released data sections. The traffic control section can be deployed
to make wake-up calls to sleeping nodes.
As the envisioned WSN topology consists of a large number of nodes, clustering is used to reduce the complexity and ease the maintenance of the network by assigning clusterheads to control a certain number of surrounding
nodes. We showed that the benefits of a clustered structure, in terms of energy
consumption, can be harvested in the routing process alone.
Multipath routing and data splitting offer ways to exploit the given redundancy in a WSN to increase the reliability of data delivery. One such approach
was presented.
We have shown that the development of energy efficient communication
protocols requires a systemwide view of the whole network protocol stack.
Future work will focus on the integration of these protocols for medium access
control, clustering and multipath routing in a physical testbed of EYES-nodes.

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