CIE Answers

CIE 1
1. a. (i) Spatially
b. (i) Records and monitors physical condition of environment

c. (iv) All the above

d. (i) Wireless

e. (iv) All the above

f. (iii) Both transmits and receives the data
g. (i) Battery

h. (i) Cross layer

i. (iv) All the above

j. (iv) All of the above
2. a. Module 1 - Q(3) - 5M - Compare and contrast the wireless sensor network
with ad hoc network.
Ans:

WIRELESS SENSOR AD HOC

FEATURE
NETWORK NETWORK
Number of sensor nodes or motes Large in quantity Medium in
quantity
Deployment type Very much dense Scattered
Rate of failure More Very rare

Change in network topology frequency rare

Communication mode Broadcast point to point
Battery Not replaceable / Not Replaceable
rechargeable
Identifiers (IDs) used in the network No unique IDs Unique IDs
Centric mode based on data based on
address
Fusion/Aggregation Possible Not suitable
 WIRELESS SENSOR AD HOC
FEATURE
NETWORK NETWORK
Computational capacities & Limited Not limited
memory requirement
Data rate support provided Lower Higher
Redundancy High Low

b. Module 1 - Q(4) - 5M - Write a short on the components of wireless sensor

network.
Ans:

Components of WSN:
a. Sensors:
Sensors in WSN are used to capture the environmental variables and
which is used for data acquisition. Sensor signals are converted into
electrical signals.
b. Radio Nodes:
It is used to receive the data produced by the Sensors and sends it to the
WLAN access point. It consists of a microcontroller, transceiver,
external memory, and power source.
c. WLAN Access Point :
It receives the data which is sent by the Radio nodes wirelessly,
generally through the internet.
d. Evaluation Software :
The data received by the WLAN Access Point is processed by a software
called as Evaluation Software for presenting the report to the users for
further processing of the data which can be used for processing,
analysis, storage, and mining of the data.
3. Module 2 - Q(6) - Write a short note on (i) Reflection (ii) Diffraction (iii)
Scattering (iv) Doppler fading
Ans:
a. Reflection:
 When a waveform propagating in medium A hits the boundary to
another medium B and the boundary layer between them is smooth,
one part of the waveform is reflected back into medium A, another one
is transmitted into medium B, and the rest is absorbed. The amount of
reflected/transmitted/absorbed energy depends on the materials and
frequencies involved.
b. Diffraction:
By Huygen's principle, all points on a wavefront can be considered as
sources of a new wavefront. If a waveform hits a sharp edge, it can by
this token be propagated into a shadowed region.
c. Scattering:
When a waveform hits a rough surface, it can be reflected multiple
times and diffused into many directions.
d. Doppler fading:
When a transmitter and receiver move relative to each other, the
waveforms experience a shift in frequency, according to the Doppler
effect. Too much of a shift can cause the receiver to sample signals at
wrong frequencies.

4. a. Module 1 - Q(7) - 4M - Explain about energy consumption of sensor nodes

in detail.

Ans:
For a controller, typical states are “active”, “idle”, and “sleep”; a radio
modem could turn transmitter, receiver, or both on or off; sensors and
memory could also be turned on or off. The usual terminology is to
speak of a “deeper” sleep state if less power is consumed.
b. Module 1 - Q(5) - 6M - Summarize the Application of Wireless Sensor
Network in detail with Example.

Ans:
Internet of Things (IOT)

Surveillance and Monitoring

Machine surveillance and preventive maintenance:

One idea is to fix sensor nodes to difficult to-reach areas of

machinery where they can detect vibration patterns that
indicate the need for maintenance. Examples for such
machinery could be robotics or the axles of trains. The main
advantage of WSNs here is the cable free operation, avoiding a
maintenance problem in itself and allowing a cheap, often
retrofitted installation of such sensors.
Noise Level of the surrounding

Medicine and health care:

The use of WSN in health care applications is a potentially very
beneficial, but also ethically controversial, application. Possibilities
range from post-operative and intensive care, where sensors are
directly attached to patients – the advantage of doing away with cables
is considerable here – to the long-term surveillance of (typically
elderly) patients and to automatic drug administration (embedding
sensors into drug packaging, raising alarms when applied to the wrong
patient, is conceivable). Also, patient and doctor tracking systems
within hospitals can be literally life saving.
Precision Agriculture:

Applying WSN to agriculture allows precise irrigation and fertilizing by

placing humidity/soil composition sensors into the fields. A relatively
small number is claimed to be sufficient, about one sensor per 100 m ×
100 m area. Similarly, pest control can profit from a high-resolution
surveillance of farm land. Also, livestock breeding can benefit from
 attaching a sensor to each pig or cow, which controls the health status
of the animal (by checking body temperature, step counting, or similar
means) and raises alarms if given thresholds are exceeded.

Landslide Detection
Disaster relief applications:

Disaster relief applications One of the most often mentioned

application types for WSN are disaster relief operations.

Example - Wildfire detection: Sensor nodes are equipped with

thermometers and can determine their own location (relative to each
other or in absolute
coordinates). These sensors are deployed over a wildfire, for example, a
forest, from an airplane. They collectively produce a “temperature map”
of the area or determine the perimeter of areas with high temperature
that can be accessed from the outside, for example, by fire fighters
equipped with Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs).

5. Module 1 - Q(8) - Explain in detail about the design principles of WSN.

Ans:

Distributed organization:
Both the scalability and the robustness optimization goal, and to some
degree also the other goals, make it imperative to organize the network
in a distributed fashion. That means that there should be no centralized
entity in charge. Rather, the WSNs nodes should cooperatively organize
the network, using distributed algorithms and protocols. Self-
organization is a commonly used term for this principle.
In-network processing:

When organizing a network in a distributed fashion, the nodes in the

network are not only passing on packets or executing application
programs, they are also actively involved in taking decisions about how
to operate the network. This is a specific form of information
processing that happens in the network, but is limited to information
about the network itself. In-network processing is a first-rank design
principle.

Aggregation:

The simplest in-network processing technique is aggregation.

When a sink is interested in obtaining periodic measurements
from all sensors, but it is only relevant to check whether the
average value has changed, or whether the difference between
minimum and maximum value is too big. Here, it suffices to
send the average or the minimum and maximum value.
 Transmitting data is considerably more expensive than even
complex computation shows the great energy-efficiency
benefits of this approach.

Signal processing:
Depending on application, more sophisticated
processing of data can take place within the network
Example-Edge detection: locally exchange raw data
with neighboring nodes, compute edges, only
communicate edge description to far away data sinks
Example-Tracking/angle detection of signal source:
Conceive of sensor nodes as a distributed microphone
array, use it to compute the angle of a single source,
only communicate this angle, not all the raw data
Exploit temporal and spatial correlation
Observed signals might vary only slowly in time - no
need to transmit all data at full rate all the time
Signals of neighboring nodes are often quite similar -
only try to transmit differences.
Adaptive Fidelity
Adapt the effort with which data is exchanged to the currently
required accuracy/fidelity

It is up to an application to somehow define the degree of

accuracy of the results and it is the task of the communication
protocols to try to achieve at least this accuracy as energy
efficiently as possible.

Example-Event detection
When there is no event, only very rarely send short
“all is well” messages
When event occurs, increase rate of message
exchanges
Example-Temperature
When temperature is in acceptable range, only send
temperature values at low resolution
When temperature becomes high, increase resolution
and thus message length
Data centricity
In typical networks (including ad-hoc networks), network
transactions are addressed to the identities of specific nodes.
("node-centric” or “address-centric” networking paradigm)
 In a redundantly deployed sensor networks, specific source of
an event, alarm, etc. might not be important. This focus of
networking transactions on the data directly instead of their
senders & transmitters is called data-centric networking and is
the principal design change.

Implementation options:
Overlay networks and distributed hash tables:
In peer-to-peer networking, the solution for an
efficient lookup of retrieval of data from an unknown
source is usually to form an overlay network,
implementing a Distributed Hash Table(DHT). The
desired data can be identified via a given key (a hash)
and the DHT will provide one (or possibly several)
sources for the data associated with this key.
Publish/Subscribe:

The required separation in both time and identity of a

sink node asking for information and the act of
providing this information is not well matched with
the synchronous characteristics of a request/reply
protocol. Publish/subscribe approach solves this
issue. Any node interested in a given kind of data can
subscribe to it, and any node can publish data, along
with information about its kind as well. Upon a
publication, all subscribers to this kind of data are
notified of the new data.
Exploit location information

Since the location of an event is a crucial information for many

applications, there have to be mechanisms that determine the location
of sensor nodes (and possibly also that of observed events). Once such
information is available, it can simplify the design and operation of
communication protocols and can improve their energy efficiency
considerably.
Exploit activity patterns
Activity patterns in a wireless sensor network tend to be quite different
from traditional networks. Once an event has happened, it can be
detected by a larger number of sensors, breaking into a frenzy of
activity, causing a well-known event shower effect. Hence, the protocol
design should be able to handle such bursts of traffic by being able to
switch between modes of quiescence and of high activity.
Exploit heterogeneity
 Sensor nodes can be heterogenous by constructions, that is, some
nodes have larger batteries, farther-reaching communication devices,
or more processing power. They can also be heterogenous by evolution,
that is, all nodes started from an equal state, but because some nodes
had to perform more tasks during the operation of the network.
Whether by construction or by evolution, heterogeneity in the network
is both a burden and
an opportunity.
Component-based protocol stacks and cross-layer optimization
A default collection of components is needed to be defined, not all of
which have to be always available at all times on all sensor nodes, but
which can form a basic “toolbox” of protocols and algorithms to
build upon.
6. Module 2 - Q(13) - Differentiate between fast fading and flat fading. - 4M
What is the maximum power received at a distance of 0.5 Km over free
space for 1 GHz frequency. The system consists of transmitting antenna
with 2.5 dB gain and antenna is fed with 150 W powers. - 6M
Ans:
Fast fading occurs when the coherence time of the channel is small
relative to the delay requirement of the application. In this case, the
amplitude and phase change imposed by the channel varies
considerably over the period of use.

The wireless channel is said to be flat fading, if it has constant gain

and linear phase response over a bandwidth which is greater than the
bandwidth of the transmitted signal. In this type of fading all the
frequency components of the received signal fluctuate in same
proportions simultaneously.
 7. Module 2 - Q(5) - Analyze Modulation and De-Modulation in Wireless
Communication.

Ans:

When digital computers communicate, they exchange digital data, which are
essentially sequences of symbols.
Each symbol coming from a finite alphabet, the channel alphabet

In the process of modulation, (groups of) symbols from the channel alphabet
are mapped to one of a finite number of waveforms of the same finite length
called the symbol duration
With two different waveforms: a binary modulation results, symbol alphabet
are binary data {0, 1} or bipolar data {−1, 1}
If the size is m ∈ N, m > 2, we talk about m-ary modulation
“Speed” of data transmission/modulation
Symbol rate: The symbol rate is the inverse of the symbol duration; for
binary modulation, it is also called bit rate.
Data rate: The data rate is the rate in bit per second that the modulator
can accept for transmission; it is thus the rate by which a user can
transmit binary data.
Modulation is carried out at the transmitter.

The receiver ultimately wants to recover the transmitted symbols from

a received
waveform.
Demodulation is carried out at the receiver.

The mapping from a received waveform to symbols is called

demodulation
The receiver decides for the wrong symbol with some probability, called
the symbol error rate
For digital data represented by bits, the notion of bit error rate (BER)
Most common form of modulation is the band pass modulation - the
information signal is modulated onto a periodic carrier wave of comparably high
frequency

The modulated signal s(t) can be represented as: s(t) = A(t) · cos(ω(t) +
φ(t)) , where

A(t) is the time-dependent amplitude

ω(t) is the time-dependent frequency
φ(t) is the phase shift
There are 3 fundamental modulation types:
Amplitude Shift Keying (ASK)

Phase Shift Keying (PSK)

 Frequency Shift Keying (FSK)

CIE-2
1. a. (iv) both(a) and (b)
b. (ii) controlled access

c. (iii) both 1 & 2

d. (ii) clustering
e. (ii) beacon frame

f. (i) Power aware

g. (i) Sensor-mac

h. (iv) overhearing

i. (ii) x’s link adopted

j. (iv) 0

2. Analyze the various problems in WSN and show how it is resolved with
STEM protocol.

Ans:

Sparse Topology and Energy Management (STEM) protocol does not

cover all aspects of a MAC protocol but provides a solution for the idle
listening problem.
STEM targets networks that are deployed to wait for and report on the
behaviour of a certain event, for example, when studying the paths of
elephants in a habitat.

The network has a monitor state, where the nodes idle and do nothing,
and also a transfer state, where the nodes exhibit significant sensing
and communication activity.
STEM tries to eliminate idle listening in the monitor state and to
provide a fast transition into the transfer state, if required.

The term “topology” in STEMs name comes from the observation that
as nodes enter and leave the sleep mode network topology changes.

Two different channels are used, requiring two transceivers in each

node: the wakeup channel and the data channel.

The data channel is always in sleep mode, except when transmitting

or receiving data packets. The underlying MAC protocol is executed
solely on the data channel during the transfer states.
On the wakeup channel the time is divided into fixed-length wakeup
periods of length T. A wakeup period is subdivided into a listen period
of length TRx << T and a sleep period, where the wakeup channel
transceiver enters sleep mode, too.
If a node enters the listen period, it simply switches on its receiver for
the wakeup channel and waits for incoming signals.

There are two different variants for the transmitter to acquire the
receiver’s attention:

In STEM-B, the transmitter issues so-called beacons on the

wakeup channel periodically and without prior carrier sensing.
As soon as the receiver picks up the beacon, it sends an
acknowledgment frame back on the wakeup channel, switches
on the transceiver for the data channel, and both nodes can
proceed to execute the regular MAC protocol on the data
channel, like for example an RTS/CTS handshake.
 In STEM-T, the transmitter sends out a simple busy tone on
the control channel for a time long enough to hit the receiver’s
listen period. All the transmitter’s neighbors (the receiver as
well as other nodes) will sense the busy tone and switch on
their data channel, without sending an acknowledgment
packet.
Under the assumption of no beacon collisions, STEM-B has more
advantages than STEM-T as the busy tone/beacon frames are sent for
the maximum time, while in STEM-B likely an acknowledgment frame
will be received much earlier.

3. Illustrate the four scenarios of the working of schedule based SMACS

protocol.

Ans:

Self-Organizing Medium Access Control for Sensor Networks (SMACS)

essentially combines neighborhood discovery and assignment of TDMA
schedules to nodes.

The available spectrum is subdivided into many channels and each

node can tune its transceiver to an arbitrary one. Alternatively, it is
assumed that many CDMA codes are available.
Most of the nodes in the sensor network are stationary and such an
assignment is valid for fairly long times.
Each node divides its time locally into fixed-length superframes (of
duration Tframe seconds), which do not necessarily have the same phase
as the neighbor’s superframes. However, all nodes have the same
superframe length and this requires time synchronization.
Superframes are also 136 MAC protocols subdivided into time slots but
this is only loose since transmissions are not confined to occur only
within a single time slot.

The goal of SMACS is to detect neighboring nodes and to set up

exclusive links or channels

SMACS takes care that for a single node the time slots of different links
do not overlap (using a simple greedy algorithm) and furthermore for
each link randomly one out of a large number of frequency
channels/CDMA codes is picked and allocated to the link.

Case 1: (2M)
Node X, Y both so far unconnected Node X sends invitation
message Node Y answers, telling X that is unconnected to any
 other node Node X tells Y to pick slot/frequency for the link
Node Y sends back the link specification

Case 2: (2M)
X has some neighbors, Y has no neighbors. Node X will
construct link specification and instruct Y to use it (since Y is
unattached)

Case 3: (3M)
X has no neighbors, Y has some neighbors. Node Y picks link
specification
 Case 4: (3M)

Both nodes already have links (neighbors). Nodes exchange

their schedules and pick free slots/frequencies in mutual
agreement

4. Discuss how PAMAS protocol solves the exposed terminal in WSN.

Ans:
Power Aware Multiaccess with Signaling(PAMAS) protocol is originally
designed for ad hoc networks. It is one of the oldest contention based MAC
protocol designed with energy efficiency is the main objective.
It provides a detailed overhearing avoidance mechanism while it does
not consider the idle listening problem.
The protocol combines the busy-tone solution and RTS/CTS
handshake.
A distinctive feature of PAMAS is that it uses two channels: a data
channel and a control channel.
All the signaling packets (RTS, CTS, busy tones) are transmitted on
the control channel, while the data channel is reserved for data
packets.
5. a. 6M - Justify how mediation device protocol overcomes idle waiting time
problems

Ans:
THE MEDIATION DEVICE PROTOCOL -

The mediation device protocol is compatible with the peer-to-peer

communication mode of the IEEE 802.15.4 low-rate WPAN standard. It
allows each node in a WSN to go into sleep mode periodically and to
wake up only for short times to receive packets from neighbor nodes.
There is no global time reference, each node has its own sleeping
schedule, and does not take care of its neighbors sleep schedules. Upon
each periodic wakeup, a node transmits a short query beacon,
indicating its node address and its willingness to accept packets from
other nodes.
The node stays awake for some short time following the query beacon,
to open up a window for incoming packets. If no packet is received
during this window, the node goes back into sleep mode. When a node
wants to transmit a packet to a neighbor, it has to synchronize with it.
One option would be to have the sender actively waiting for query
beacon, but this wastes considerable energy for synchronization
 purposes only. The dynamic synchronization approach achieves this
synchronization without requiring the transmitter to be awake
permanently to detect the destinations query beacon.
To achieve this, a mediation device (MD) is used. We first discuss the
case where the mediation device is not energy constrained and can be
active all the time. Because of its full duty cycle, the mediation device
can receive the query beacons from all nodes in its vicinity and learn
their wakeup periods.

b. 4M - Summarize the transceiver design consideration in wireless

network.
Ans:

Low power consumption.

As one consequence: small transmit power and thus a small
transmission range.
As a further consequence: low duty cycle. Most hardware should be
switched off or operated in a low-power standby mode most of the time.
Comparably low data rates, on the order of tens to hundreds kilobits per
second, required.
Low implementation complexity and costs.
Low degree of mobility.
A small form factor for the overall node.
6. Compare the wakeup radio protocol with low duty protocols.
Ans:

Low duty cycle protocols try to avoid spending (much) time in the idle
state and to reduce the communication activities of a sensor node to a
minimum.
Wakeup radio - sleep state is only when a node is about to transmit or
receive packets spend most of their time in the sleep mode, wake up
periodically to receive packets from other nodes

In cycled-receiver approach, nodes spend most of their time in the

sleep mode and wake up periodically to receive packets from other
nodes.
Specifically, a node A listens onto the channel during its listen period
and goes back into sleep mode when no other node takes the
opportunity to direct a packet to A. A potential transmitter B must
acquire knowledge about A’s listen periods to send its packet at the
right time – this task corresponds to a rendezvous.

This rendezvous can, for example, be accomplished by letting node A

transmit a short beacon at the beginning of its listen period to
indicate its willingness to receive packets.

Another method is to let node B send frequent request packets until

one of them hits A’s listen period and is really answered by A. However,
in either case, node A only receives packets during its listen period. If
node A itself wants to transmit packets, it must acquire the target’s
listen period.
A whole cycle consisting of sleep period and listen period is also called
a wakeup period.
The ratio of the listen period length to the wakeup period length is
also called the node’s duty cycle.
By choosing a small duty cycle, the transceiver is in sleep mode most
of the time, avoiding idle listening and conserving energy.

By choosing a small duty cycle, the traffic directed from neighboring

nodes to a given node concentrates on a small time window (the
listen period) and in heavy load situations significant competition can
occur.

Sleep phases should not be too short unless the start-up costs
outweigh the benefits.
 In other protocols like S-MAC, there is also a periodic wakeup but nodes
can both transmit and receive during their wakeup phases. When nodes
have their wakeup phases at the same time, there is no necessity for a
node wanting to transmit a packet to be awake outside these phases to
rendezvous its receiver.

7. Show how the traffic is adapted in WSN using TRAMA protocol.

Ans:

Traffic-Adaptive Medium Access (TRAMA) protocol assumes that all

nodes are time synchronized and divides time into random access
periods and scheduled-access periods.

A random access period followed by a scheduled-access period is called

a cycle.

The protocol consists of three different components:

Neighborhood protocol

The neighborhood protocol is executed solely in the

random access phase, which is subdivided into
small time slots. A node picks randomly a number
of time slots and transmits small control packets in
these without doing any carrier sensing.
Schedule exchange protocol

By the schedule exchange protocol, a node transmits

its current transmission schedule (indicating in
which time slots it transmits to which neighbor) and
also picks up its neighbors’ schedules. This
information is used to actually allocate slots to
transmitters and receivers.
Adaptive election algorithm
The adaptive election algorithm of TRAMA provides
approaches for resolving this situation and also for
allowing nodes to reuse their neighbors’ unused
winning slots.
CIE-3
1. a. (i) Constructing energy-efficient secondary paths

b. (iii) broadcast
c. (ii) Source-based tree
d. (iv) Multicast Incremental Power

e. (ii) Geo-casting
f. (ii) WHERE
g. (i) Best average case

h. (iv) all the above

i. (i) Modulation
j. (i) Autonomous sensors