Chapter: Sensor Networks

Index

1. Introduction 2
2. Applications 3
3. Characteristics 4
4. challenging issues 5
5. Advantages of WSN 6
6. Design Issues 7
7. Architecture 9
8. Sensor Deployment 11
i. Issues and Challenges 11
ii. Self-Organization 12
iii. Localization 12
9. Conclusion and Future Work 17

1
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 1. Introduction to Sensor Networks

 A Sensor Network is composed of number of Sensor Nodes (SN) connected together over
a network comprising various topologies which depends upon the type of applications.
 An SN typically consist of following components:

Transceiver

Figure 1: Typical components of Sensor Node

 A wireless Sensor Networks can be considered as a special case of Ad-Hoc Networks

with reduced or no mobility in larger number of devices.
 WSNs enable reliable monitoring and analysis of unknown and untested environments.
 Sensors nodes can be deployed:
o Randomly using Low flying airplane or UAV if area is not accessible physically
(most work assume that unless specified clearly).
o In regular pattern, if area is physically accessible (feasible in most civilian
applications except natural disaster) and can be deployed as hexagonal,
rectangular or triangular pattern.

2
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 (a) (b) (c)

Figure 2: different configurations of sensor placement in deterministic deployment. (a)

Square/Rectangular pattern (b) Hexagonal Pattern (c) Triangular pattern

 Query from Base Station (BS) to Sensor Node (SN) (or Source Node), indicates
frequency of transmitting sensed data and type of sensed data to be sent.
 Data from SNs are sent back to the BS or Sink Node.
 So, source of data can be any SN while the destination is always the BS.
 Sometime the query may ask for multiple parameters such as temperature, pressure,
humidity, etc, and may be required to sense and transmit the values only once, or over a
period of time, or some past history.
 Based on these, the query can be divided into three categories:
o One time Queries; send current value of data
o Persistent Queries; send data every 5 minutes for next 2 hours
o Historical Queries; what was the data 2 days ago.
 These networks are ‘data centric’ i.e., unlike traditional networks where data is
requested from a given specific location, here, data is requested based on certain
attributes such as ‘which SN has temperature over 35°C’
 WSN could be considered as flat architecture, or clusters of SNs could be formed to
facilitate easiness in control, localization of data communication, and aggregation of data.

2. Various Applications of Wireless sensor Networks

Judging by the interest shown by the military, academia, and the media, innumerable
applications exists for WSNs of which some are mentioned below:

 Distributed Computing
o Weather Prediction, wild forest fire, Monitoring endangered species

 Fault detection and diagnosis

3
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 o Machinery, Large bridges and tall structures

 Health Care Monitoring

 Monitoring of Soldiers’ physical and psychological conditions
 Security and tactical surveillance
 Defence operations
 Presence of certain biological and chemical agents
 Detecting ambient conditions
o Temperature, stress, vibration, movement, sound, smoke, light, gas, radiation, impurities

3. Characteristics

 Static Topology:
If the nodes are not mobile, the network topology may not change at all.

 Energy-Constrained Operation:
All SNs in a WSN rely on batteries and other exhaustible means for their energy. For
these nodes, the most important system design optimization criteria may be energy
conservation.

 Power-Manageable components:
Several functional states such as sleep, deep-sleep provide different QoS with different
power consumption.

 Sensor Design
Single objective sensors or multiple objective sensors

 Cooperation
Cooperation among sensors in forwarding data

 Data Reduction
Data Aggregation and interpolation

4
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Limited Bandwidth
Wireless links continue to have significantly lower capacity than an infrastructure
network.

 Wireless Communication
Realized throughput of wireless communications – after accounting for the effects of
multiple access, fading, noise, and interference conditions, etc., is often much less than a
radio’s maximum transmission rate

 Security Threats
Generally more prone to physical security threats than fixed-cable nets. The increased
possibility of eavesdropping, spoofing, and minimization of denial-of-service type attacks
should be carefully considered

4. Challenging Issues

The WSN is plagued with many challenges while designing the network and deploying the
nodes. Some of the challenges are discussed below.

 Limited computation and data storage

Since the SN has a limited supply of battery, the processing unit is not high enough so as
to provide huge computations. Also the size of memory involved is small.

 Low power consumption

The sensor node is wireless in nature. These nodes are deployed in a region, which are
untested and unknown. Thus, it is not feasible to supply power to these nodes indefinitely.
So the power consumption has to be kept at minimum so as to keep the residual energy
high and increase the network lifetime.

 Wireless Communication
o Access Medium

5
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Since the network is wireless in nature, the bandwidth is low. With increase in
number of users, it becomes cumbersome to facilitate all the users at a same time.
In order to make an optimize use of the network; we make use of various wireless
access protocols.
o Ad-Hoc vs Infrastructure
o Self-Organizing topology and routing
As the sensor nodes are deployed, the first mechanism of all these nodes is to
establish the network. As the number of rounds keeps on increasing, nodes starts
to die out, and network life-time keeps on reducing. Thus in order to keep the
optimization of the network at highest, the nodes keep-on organizing themselves
in most optimised manner.

 Data-Precision related issues

 Continuous operation
A node once deployed has to work continuously for a long period of time (defined by
application) and during that time it has to constantly monitor the region and communicate
the data back to BS depending upon the type of queries from the BS

 Robustness and fault tolerance.

The sensor are deployed in such a manner that they are self-adaptive i.e., they adapt
themselves to the changing environment and to the residual power. The network where
these nodes are deployed are distributed network in a manner that each sensor operates
autonomously from neighbours, they may have overlapped service area, and their does
not exist a single point of failure.

5. Advantages of WSN

Although most of today’s sensors are still wired, however, the wireless sensor offers
significant advantage over the wired sensors. Some of these advantages are mentioned below:

 Intimate connection with its immediate environment

 No disturbance to environment, animals, plants, etc.

6
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Avoid unsafe or unwise repeated field studies.
 Deploy one time and get data for a long term.
 Economical method for long term data collection
 Appropriate design of sensor nodes.
 Multi-objective sensors and single objective sensors.
 Cooperation among sensors
 Data aggregation and interpretation.

6. Design Issues in WSN

WSNs are made of large number of tiny sensor nodes, which have limited power and less
processing capability. The life time of the individual sensor node is not easily predictable and
also the network needs to be formed autonomously as it is not possible to manually set up the
sensor network for all applications. The sensor network also consists of several different
kinds of nodes hence heterogeneity needs to be supported. The number of sensor nodes in the
network is not constant throughout the life-time of the network. It may vary because of
addition of senor nodes or reduction of nodes due to their death. The major factors that need
to be considered while designing sensor network are listed below:

 Fault Tolerance: Possibility of node failure and change of topology of network is quite
high in case of WSN. Hence the designer of network should make the network robust and
reliable even in case of node failures and topology changes. The network should
function smoothly and normally irrespective of node failures and topology changes.
 Life Time: WSN are supposed to work for a quite long time with low power
consumption. They are supposed to last at-least for 6 months to 1 year. We need to keep
in mind that every node in WSN may be powered using just a 3 V battery and this should
be sufficient for the entire life time of the node. The design of protocols of WSN should
be such that the node consumes as less energy as possible. This will help in making the
WSN last longer.
 Scalability: The design of WSN should support addition of new nodes any time and also
the design should support large number of nodes because some applications in WSN may
require quite a huge number of sensor nodes.

7
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Date Aggregation: The sensor nodes in WSN are located close to each other hence the
possibility of similar data being generated by the nodes next to each other is quite high.
So the data needs to be aggregated and the duplicate data needs to be avoided because the
transmission and reception data is the most costly affair in WSN. The data needs to be
aggregated at different levels in WSN so that only the necessary data is transmitted and
received and the redundant data is not communicated.
 Cost: The cost of each sensor node is supposed to be Rs 1000/-, as WSN can have large
number of sensor nodes the total cost of the network can become a quite expensive affair.
So the designer of WSN needs to decide on the optimal number of nodes necessary for
the application.
 Medium Access Scheme: Communication is a major source of energy consumption in
WSNs and MAC protocols directly control the radio of the nodes in the network. MAC
protocols should be designed for regulating energy consumption, which in turn influences
the lifetime of the network. The MAC layer provides fine-grained control of the
transceiver and allows on and off switching of the radio. The design of the MAC protocol
should have this switching mechanism to decide when and how frequently the on and off
mechanism should be done. This helps in conserving of energy.
A MAC protocol should have minimum latency and high throughput when the sensor
networks are deployed in critical applications. A MAC protocol should include Message
Passing. Message passing means dividing a long message into small fragments and
transmit them in burst. Thus, a node which has more data gets more time to access the
medium.
 Environment: The environment in which the WSN is deployed can be very demanding,
so the design of WSN should be such that WSN should be able to survive regardless of
the conditions in which WSN s deployed. Heterogeneity Support: The protocols designed
for WSN should support different kinds of sensor nodes and also be able to support
variety of applications
 Data Aggregation and Data Dissemination: Data gathering is the main objectives of
sensor nodes. The sensors periodically sense the data from the surrounding environment,
process it and transmit it to the base station or sink. The frequency of reporting the data
and the number of sensors which report the data depends on the particular application.
Data gathering involves systematically collecting the sensed data from multiple sensors
and transmitting the data to the base station for further processing. But the data generated

8
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 from sensors is often redundant and also the amount of data generated may be very huge
for the base station to process it.
Data dissemination is a process by which data and the queries for the data are routed in
the sensor network. Data dissemination is a two-step process. In the first step, if a node is
interested in some events, like temperature or humidity, then it broadcasts its interests to
its neighbours periodically and then through the whole sensor network. In the second
step, the nodes that have the requested data will send the data back to the source node
after receiving the request
 Autonomous Operations: The WSN should be able to organize, reorganize and operate
autonomously because sometimes WSN deployed in places where human habitation is
not possible.
 Limited Memory and Processing Capability: The sensor nodes have very limited
memory, power and processing capabilities, so all designs of WSN should not be
demanding in terms of processing requirements or memory requirements

7. Architecture

The most common WSN architecture follows the OSI architecture Model. The architecture of
the WSN includes five layers and three cross layers. Mostly in sensor network we require five
layers, namely application, transport, network, data link & physical layer. The three cross
planes are namely power management, mobility management, and task management. These
layers of the WSN are used to accomplish the network and make the sensors work together in
order to raise the complete efficiency of the network

Task Management Plane

Mobility Management Plane

Power Management Plane

Application Layer

Transport Layer

Network Layer

Data Link Layer

Physical Layer 9
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Figure 3: Architecture of Wireless Sensor Network

Application Layer

The application layer is liable for traffic management and offers software for numerous
applications that convert the data in a clear form to find positive information. Sensor
networks arranged in numerous applications in different fields such as agricultural, military,
environment, medical, etc.

Transport Layer

The function of the transport layer is to deliver congestion avoidance and reliability where a
lot of protocols intended to offer this function are either practical on the upstream. These
protocols use dissimilar mechanisms for loss recognition and loss recovery. The transport
layer is exactly needed when a system is planned to contact other networks. Providing a
reliable loss recovery is more energy efficient and that is one of the main reasons why TCP is
not fit for WSN. In general, Transport layers can be separated into Packet driven, Event
driven. There are some popular protocols in the transport layer namely STCP (Sensor
Transmission Control Protocol), PORT (Price-Oriented Reliable Transport Protocol and
PSFQ (pump slow fetch quick).

Network Layer

The main function of the network layer is routing, it has a lot of tasks based on the
application, but actually, the main tasks are in the power conserving, partial memory, buffers,
and sensor don’t have a universal ID and have to be selforganized. The simple idea of the
routing protocol is to explain a reliable lane and redundant lanes, according to a convinced
scale called metric, which varies from protocol to protocol. There are a lot of existing
protocols for this network layer, they can be separate into; flat routing and hierarchal routing
or can be separated into time driven, query-driven & event driven.

Data Link Layer

The data link layer is liable for multiplexing data frame detection, data streams, MAC, &
error control, confirm the reliability of point–point (or) point– multipoint.

10
Zeeshan A. Haq,
Physical Layer

The physical layer provides an edge for transferring a stream of bits above physical medium.
This layer is responsible for the selection of frequency, generation of a carrier frequency,
signal detection, Modulation & data encryption. IEEE 802.15.4 is suggested as typical for
low rate particular areas & wireless sensor network with low cost, power consumption,
density, the range of communication to improve the battery life. CSMA/CA is used to support
star & peer to peer topology. There are several versions of IEEE 802.15.4.V.

8. Sensor Deployment

Sensors are deployed in a deterministic manner: nodes are placed manually keeping in mind
the Region of Interest (RoI), Range of Sensing, and Range of Communication. This
deployment is feasible in an accessible region. But, if the region is inaccessible or untested
and unknown, we have to make way for random deployment where large number of sensor
node are dropped from air and they create their own network on being switched on.

8.1 Issues and Challenges

The performance of WSNs depends largely on the deployment of the sensor nodes as well as
their life time mainly determined by the energy consumption. The emergence of WSN as one
of the dominant technologies in the coming decade has posed numerous challenges to
researchers. These networks are generally composed of hundreds, and potentially thousands
of tiny sensors nodes, functioning autonomously, and in many cases without access to
renewable energy resources. WSN challenges are proposed in four broad categories such as:
limiting radio operations, data management, geographic routing, and system monitoring
maintenance.

Some of the challenges in while deploying the sensor nodes are discussed here:

 When sensor nodes are deployed in real world, Node death due to energy depletion either
caused by normal battery discharge or due to short circuits is a common problem which
may lead to wrong sensor readings. Also sink nodes acts as gateways and they store and
forward the data collected. Hence, problems affecting sink nodes should be detected to
minimize data loss.

11
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Deployment of sensor networks results in network congestion due to many concurrent
transmission attempts made by several sensor nodes. Concurrent transmission attempts
occur due to inappropriate design of the MAC layer or by repeated network floods.
Another issue is the physical length of a link. Two nodes may be very close to each other
but still they may not be able to communicate due to physical interference in the real
world while nodes which are far away may communicate with each other.
 Low data yield is another common problem in real world deployment of sensor nodes.
Low data yield means a network delivers insufficient amount of information.
 Self-Configuration of sensor networks without human intervention is needed due to
random deployment of sensor nodes.

8.2 Self-Organization

Self-organization is one of the most important characteristics in an Ad-hoc Sensor Network.

Thousands of Sensors are deployed in a geographical area randomly without considering the
location factor. After deployment, sensors are to self-organize themselves to form a network
of their own. How well the network is formed determines the life of the whole network as
well as the quality of data transmission. Self-organization based on clustering has proven to
be very useful in this regard. Since hierarchical clustering reduces energy consumption by
routing data from one node to another.

An Ad hoc Sensor Network is a self-organizing multi- hop wireless network, which relies
neither on fixed infrastructure nor on predetermined connectivity. This property enables rapid
deployment without precise prior knowledge of the coverage area of interest; hence serves
well for situations lacking fixed infrastructure or high risk, e.g., in military communications,
disaster management, law enforcement, and etc.

8.3 Localization

Localization is estimated through communication between localised node and un-localised

node for determining their geometrical placement or position. Localization is determined by
means of distance and angles between nodes. There are many concepts used in localization
such as:
1. Lateration occurs when distance between nodes is measured to estimate location.
2. Angulation occurs when angle between nodes is measured to estimate location.

12
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 3. Trilateration: Location of node is estimated through distance measurement from three
nodes. In this concept, intersection of three circles is calculated, which gives a single
point which is a position of un-localized node.
4. Multilateration: In this concept, more than three nodes are used in location estimation.
5. Triangulation: In this mechanism, at least two angles of an un-localized node from
two localized nodes are measured to estimate its position. Trigonometric laws, law of
sines and cosines are used to estimate node position

Localized schemes are classified as anchor based or anchor free, centralised or distributed,
GPS based or GPS free, fine grained or coarse grained, stationary or mobile sensor nodes and
range based or range free.

1. Anchor based or Anchor free: In anchor based mechanism, the position of few
nodes is known. Un-localized nodes are localised by these known node positions.
Accuracy is highly depending on the number of anchor nodes. Anchor free algorithm
estimate relative positions on nodes instead of computing absolute node position.

2. Centralised and Distributed: in centralised schemes, all information is passed to one

central point or node which is usually called “sink node or base station”. Sink node
computes, position of nodes and forwards information to respected nodes.
Computation cost of centralised based algorithm is decreased, and it takes less energy
as compared with computation at individual node. In distributed schemes, sensors
calculate and estimate their position individually and directly communicate with
anchor nodes. There is no clustering in distributed schemes, and every node estimates
its own position.

3. GPS Based and GPS Free: GPS based schemes are very costly because GPS
receiver has to be put on every node. Localization accuracy is very high as well. GPS-
free algorithms do not use GPS, and they calculate the distance between the nodes
relative to local network and are less costly as compared with GPS-based schemes.
Some nodes need to be localised through GPS which are called anchor beacon nodes
that initiate the localization process.

13
Zeeshan A. Haq,
4. Coarse Grained or Fine Grained: Fine grained localization schemes result when
localization methods use features of received signal strength, while coarse grained
localization schemes result without using received signal strength.

5. Stationary or Mobile Sensor Nodes: Localization algorithms are also developed

designed according to field of sensor nodes in which they are deployed. Some nodes
are static in nature and are fixed at one place and the majority applications use static
nodes. That is why many localization algorithms are designed for static nodes. Few
applications use mobile sensor nodes for which few mechanisms are designed.

6. Range Free and Range Based Localization:

a. Range Free Localization: they use radio connectivity to communicate between nodes
to infer their location.
 DV HOP: Distance Vector Hop estimates range between nodes using hop count.
Atleast three anchor nodes broadcast coordinates with hop count across the
network. The information propagates across the network from neighbour to
neighbour node. When neighbour nodes receive such information, hop count is
incremented by one. In this way unlocalised node can find number of hops away
from anchor node. All anchor nodes calculate shortest path from other nodes, and
un-localised nodes also calculate shortest path from all anchor nodes. Average
hop distance formula is calculated as follows:

Distance between two nodes / number of hops

 HOP Terrain: hop terrain is similar to DV hop method in finding the distance
between anchor node and un-localized node. There are two parts in the method.
In the first part, un-localized node estimates its position from anchor node by
using average hop distance formula which is distance between two nodes/total
number of hops. This is initial position estimation. After initial position
estimation the second part executes, in which initial estimated position is
broadcast to neighbour nodes. Neighbour nodes receive this information with
distance information. A node refines its position until final position is met by
using least square method.

14
Zeeshan A. Haq,
  Centroid System: centroid system uses proximity based grained localisation
algorithm that uses multiple anchor node, which broadcast their locations with
(Xi, Yi) coordinates. After receiving information, un-localised nodes estimate
their position. Anchor nodes are randomly deployed in the network area, and they
localize themselves through GPS receiver. Node localizes itself after receiving
anchor node beacon signals using the following relation:

X i ,+… … …+ X n Y i ,+… … … …+ ,Y n
( X est ,Y est ) =( , )
N N

Where Xest nad Yest are the estimated locations of un-localised node.

 Approximate Point in Triangulation (APIT): in this scheme, anchor nodes get

location information from GPS or transmitters. Un-localised node gets location
information from overlapping triangles. The area is divided into overlapping
triangles. Here the following four steps are included:
 Un-localised nodes maintain table after receiving beacon messages from
anchor nodes. The table contains information of anchor ID, location and
signal strength
 Un-localised nodes select any three anchor nodes from area and check
whether they are in triangle form. This test is called PIT (point in
triangulation) test.
 PIT test continue until accuracy of un-localized node location is found by
combination of any three anchor nodes.
 At the end, centre of gravity (COG) is calculated, which is intersection of
all triangles where an un-localised node is placed to find its estimated
position.

 Gradient Algorithm: in gradient algorithm, multi-lateration is used by un-

localized node to gets its location. Gradient starts by anchor nodes and helps un-
localised nodes to estimates their positions from three anchor nodes by using

15
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 multi-lateration. It also uses hop count values which is initially set to zero and is
incremented when it propagates to other neighbouring nodes. Every sensor nodes
takes information of the shortest path from anchor nodes. Gradient algorithm
follows step given below:
 Anchor nodes broadcasts beacon message containing its coordinate and hop
count value.
 Un-localised node calculates shortest path between itself and the anchor node
from which it receives beacon signals. To calculate estimated distance
between anchor node and un-localised node, the following mathematical
equation is used: D ji=h j , Ai d hop where dhop is the estimated distance covered
by one hop.
 Error equation is used to get minimum error which node calculates its
coordinate by using multi-lateration.

b. Range Based Localization: These are distance-estimation and angle-estimation based

techniques.
 Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI) : in RSSI, distance between
transmitter and receiver is estimated by measuring signal at the receiver.
Propagation loss is also calculated, and it is converted into distance estimation.
As the distance between transmitter and receiver is increased, power of signal
strength is decreased. This is measured by RSSI using the following relation:
Pt G t G r 2
Pr ( d)=
(4 )2 d 2
Where Pt = transmitted power,
Gt = transmitter antenna gain,
Gr = receiver antenna gain,
 = wavelength of the transmitter signal on meters.

 Angle of Arrival (AOA) : un-localised node location can be estimated using

angle of two anchor signals. These are the angles at which the anchors signals are
received by the un-localised nodes. Un-localised nodes use triangulation method
to estimate their location.

16
Zeeshan A. Haq,
  Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA): in this technique the time difference of
arrival radio and ultrasound signal is used. Each node is equipped with
microphone and speaker. Anchor node sends signals and waits for some fixed
amount of time which is tdelay, and then it generates “chirps” with the help of
speaker. These signals are received by un-localised node at tradio time. When un-
localised node receives anchor’s radio signals, it turns on microphone. When
microphone detects chirps sent by anchor node, un-localised nodes saves the time
tsound. Un-localised node uses this time information for calculating the distance
between anchor and itself using the following relation

d= ( S radio−S sound )∗(t sound −t radio−t delay )

 Time of Arrival (TOA): in TOA, speed of wavelength and time of radio signals
travelling between anchor node and un-localised node is measured to estimate the
location of un-localised node. GPS uses TOA, and it is a highly accurate
technique; however, it requires high processing capability.

Out of these localization techniques, it is observed that GPS and TOA based systems are
more expensive as compared with DV hop and RSSI. It is also observed that localisation
mechanism equipped with GPS systems is highly accurate. GPS-based localization
mechanisms are less energy efficient while RSSI based mechanism are highly energy
efficient.

9. Conclusion and future work

Sensor networks are perhaps one of the fastest growing areas in the broad wireless ad hoc
networking field. Research in sensor networks is flourishing at a rapid pace and still there are
many challenges to be addressed such as:

 Energy Conservation - Nodes are battery powered with limited resources while still
having to perform basic functions such as sensing, transmission and routing
 Sensing - Many new sensor transducers are being developed to convert physical quantity
to equivalent electrical signal and many new development is anticipated

17
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 Communication - Sensor networks are very bandwidth-limited and how to optimize the
use of the scarce resources and how can sensor nodes minimize the amount of
communication
 Computation - Here, there are many open issues in what regards signal processing
algorithms and network protocols
 Applications - Many new applications are being developed and people are using their
imagination to explore potential use

18
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 19
Zeeshan A. Haq,
Yusuf anjum
Shivang

6th april

20
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 21
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 22
Zeeshan A. Haq,
12th april

23
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 24
Zeeshan A. Haq,
Yusuf anjum

Not responding

25
Zeeshan A. Haq,
13th april

26
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 27
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 28
Zeeshan A. Haq,
22nd April

29
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 30
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 31
Zeeshan A. Haq,
 32
Zeeshan A. Haq,