UNIT I

INTRODUCTION
WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK
Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is an infrastructure-less wireless network that is deployed in a
large number of wireless sensors in an ad-hoc manner that is used to monitor the system, physical or
environmental conditions.

Principle of Wireless Sensor Network

Sensor nodes are used in WSN with the onboard processor that manages and monitors the
environment in a particular area. They are connected to the Base Station which acts as a processing
unit in the WSN System.
Base Station in a WSN System is connected through the Internet to share data.

INTRODUCTION TO WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

Sensors integrated into structures, machinery, and the environment, coupled with the efficient
delivery of sensed information, could provide tremendous benefits to society. Potential benefits include

• Fewer catastrophic failures

• Conservation of natural resources
• Improved manufacturing productivity
• Improved emergency response
• Enhanced homeland security
 Bundles of lead wires and fiber optic “tails” are subject to breakage and connector failures. Long
wire bundles represent a significant installation and long-term maintenance cost, limiting the number of
sensors that may be deployed, and therefore reducing the overall quality of the data reported.

Wireless sensing networks can eliminate these costs, easing installation and eliminating connectors.

The ideal wireless sensor -

• Networked and scalable

• Consumes very little power
• Smart and software programmable
• Fast data acquisition, reliable and accurate over the long term
• Costs little to purchase and install
• Requires no real maintenance.

Examples of low data rate sensors include temperature, humidity, and peak strain captured passively.
Examples of high data rate sensors include strain, acceleration, and vibration.

Applications of WSN:

1. Internet of Things (IoT)

2. Surveillance and Monitoring for security, threat detection
3. Environmental temperature, humidity, and air pressure
4. Noise Level of the surrounding
5. Medical applications like patient monitoring
6. Agriculture
7. Landslide Detection

COMPARISON WITH AD HOC NETWORK

Wireless Sensor Ad hoc

Feature Network Network

Medium in
Number of sensor nodes or motes Large in quantity 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

Not replaceable / Not

Battery rechargeable Replaceable

Identifiers (IDs) used in the network No unique IDs Unique IDs

based on
Centric mode based on data address

Fusion/Aggregation Possible Not suitable

Computational capacities & memory

requirement Limited Not limited

Data rate support provided Lower Higher

Redundancy High Low

NODE ARCHITECTURE
• A sensor node is device that can be used in sensor network for performing data gathering,
processing, and communicating with other sensor node in the network.
• The main design objectives of a sensor node focus on economic viability, increased
flexibility (to ease process ofdeployment and blending into its environment) and conserve
energy (limited processing, communication, memory andstorage capabilities)
• The basic components of a sensor node are:

➢ Sensing unit
➢ Processing unit
➢ Communication unit
➢ Power supply unit
Sensing unit:
• Sensors are used to measure the physical quantities liketemperature, pressure
etc.
• They are hardware devices each sensor node is used to producea quantifiable response to
change in temperature or pressure ofthe environment.
• Sensor produces analog signal.
• Analog-to-Digital converter (ADC) is used to convert theanalog to digital signals.
• The digitized signal can be sent to controllers for furtherprocessing.

Processing unit:
• The micro-controller placed in the sensor is used to perform specific tasks, processes
data and controls the operation of theother components in the sensor node.
• Usage of memory in sensor node is application dependent.
• External memory is used to store the collected information.
• Usually flash memories are used in sensor node due to theirlow cost and high storage
capacity.

Communication unit:
• Sensor nodes use transceiver to communicate with other nodes.
• The wireless communication media used in sensor networks are radio frequency,
 optical communication and infrared.

Power supply unit:

• Sensor node consumes power for sensing, data gathering,communication and data
processing.
• Energy required for data communication is more whencompared with other
process.
• Changing the battery in sensor node can be costly and inconvenient.

Hardware subsystems of a sensor node:

The four basic hardware subsystems of a sensor node are

• Computing subsystem
• Power supply subsystem
• Communication subsystem
• Sensing subsystem

Computing subsystem:
• Each sensor node consists of a microprocessor to control thesensor.
• Microprocessor unit of every node is responsible for executing and managing the
communication protocols.
• This subsystem is responsible for data processing and manipulation, error
corrections.

Power supply subsystem:

• The life time of sensor node is depend upon the battery life.
• Batteries placed in each sensor can have limited power.
• Since sensor node receive power from batteries, limitedamount of power can be
used for processing.
• Depending upon the operating environment of sensor node,power can be turned on
or off.
• The battery used in sensor node has to charge from the suitable energy source and
hence make the sensor to operatefor prolong period.
 ➢ In Transmission and reception modes require high energyconsumption.

Sensing subsystem:
• The sensing subsystem is responsible for sensing the environment and exchanging
information with each othersensor nodes.
• Different sensors are used to sense the physical condition ofthe environment.

Software subsystems of sensor node:

• The software subsystems of sensor nodes are listed below:

➢ Operating System (OS) microcode

➢ Sensor drivers
➢ Communication processor
➢ Communication Drivers
➢ Data processing mini apps
Operating System (OS) microcode:
• OS microcode is used by high level modules of node residentsoftware.
• This microcode protects the software from the machine levelfunctionality.
• Tiny OS is written in nesC which is an extension of Clanguage.
• The event can be generated from any component and enablesto perform specific task.
Sensor drivers:
• These drivers manage the key functions of transceivers whichare embedded in sensors.
• Depending upon the operating environment of sensor nodes, the configuration and
settings of application must be installedinto the sensor.
• Sensor drivers are mainly used to protect application software.

Communication processor:

• The various operations like routing the packets, forwarding thepackets, encryption and
error correction mechanism are performed in Communication processor.
Communication Drivers:
These drivers are responsible for following operations
• Encoding and decoding
• Error correction and checking
• Modulation and demodulation

Data processing mini apps:

• This software subsystem is responsible for performing dataprocessing at node level

in a sensor network.

Hardware Components of WSN:

A basic sensor node comprises five main components

Controller: A controller to process all the relevant data, capable of executing arbitrary code.
Memory: Some memory to store programs and intermediate data; usually, different types of
memory are used for programs and data.
Sensors and actuators: The actual interface to the physical world: devices that can observe or
control physical parameters of the environment.
Communication: Turning nodes into a network requires a device for sending and receiving
information over a wireless channel.
Power supply: As usually no tethered power supply is available, some form of batteries are
necessary to provide energy
NETWORK ARCHITECTURE

• WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) is the most standard servicesemployed in commercial

and industrial applications, because of its technical development in a processor,
communication, and low-power usage of embedded computing devices.

• The WSN is built with nodes that are used to observe the surroundings like
temperature, humidity, pressure, position,vibration, sound etc

• A large number of sensors deployed on different areas wouldform a network to

communicate with each other.

• Two different types of sensor architectures are:

- Layered architecture
- Clustered architecture

Layered architecture:

• A layered architecture consists of a single powerful basestation (BS) and the

layers of sensor nodes around it.

• layered architecture use military sensor based infrastructurewith in building wireless

backbone.

• The small sensor nodes form a wireless backbone to providewireless communication

in the sensor network.

• The users have hand-held devices to communicate with BS via small nodes.

• For the complete implementation of layered architecture, thesensor network uses

Unified Network Protocol Framework (UNPF).
Unified Network Protocol Framework (UNPF):

• UNPF integrates three operations in its protocol structure

❖ Network initialization and maintenance protocol
❖ MAC protocol
❖ Routing protocol
Network initialization and maintenance protocol:

• This protocol organizes the sensor node into different layers.The layered architecture
is shown in figure.

• The BS can communicate with all node using one-hopcommunication.

• The BS broadcasts its identifier (ID) to the sensor nodes usingCDMA (Code Division
Multiple Access) code and the sensor nodes which receive the ID of BS will store it.

• As response message each sensor node sends its ID at lowestpower level. This can be
listened by BS at layer one becauseall the nodes are single hop away from BS.

• Now the BS broadcasts control message to all the layer nodes with their IDs. All the sensor
nodes send a beacon signal again.
MAC protocol:

• For the Data transmission, the Distributed TDMA receiver Oriented Channel
(DTROC) assignment MAC protocol is used.

• The two operations of DTROC are

- Channel allocation
- Channel scheduling

• Channel allocation is the process of assigning receptionchannel to every node.

• Channel scheduling means sharing of the reception channelamong the neighbors.

• DTROC uses suitable channel allocation algorithms to avoidhidden and exposed

terminal problems.
Routing protocol:

• The transmitted data of BS can be received by nodes usingdirect broadcast on the

control channel.

• Data can be forwarded using multi-hop fashion from the sensornodes to BS.
 Fig: Layered architecture
Clustered architecture:

• Clustered architecture organizes the nodes in sensor networkinto clusters.

• Each cluster contains cluster-head.

• The nodes in each cluster would exchange message withcluster.

• Each cluster-head can communicate with other cluster-heads.

• Each cluster head can also communicate with BS.

• The data collected by all the cluster members can be fused tocluster head and the
resulting information can be communicated to BS.

• The cluster formation and selection of cluster heads are fully autonomous and distributed
process this can achieved by usingnetwork protocol such as LEACH protocol.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
• Limited power and energy: WSNs are typically composed of battery-powered sensors
that have limited energy resources. This makes it challenging to ensure that the network
can function for
long periods of time without the need for frequent battery replacements.
• Limited processing and storage capabilities: Sensor nodes in a WSN are typically small
and have limited processing and storage capabilities. This makes it difficult to perform
complex tasks or store large amounts of data.
• Heterogeneity: WSNs often consist of a variety of different sensor types and nodes with
different capabilities. This makes it challenging to ensure that the network can function
effectively and
efficiently.
• Security: WSNs are vulnerable to various types of attacks, such as eavesdropping,
jamming, and spoofing. Ensuring the security of the network and the data it collects is a
major challenge.
• Scalability: WSNs often need to be able to support a large number of sensor nodes and
handle large amounts of data. Ensuring that the network can scale to meet these demands
is a significant
challenge.
• Interference: WSNs are often deployed in environments where there is a lot of
interference from other wireless devices. This can make it difficult to ensure reliable
communication between sensor nodes.
• Reliability: WSNs are often used in critical applications, such as monitoring the
environment or controlling industrial processes. Ensuring that the network is reliable and
able to function correctly
in all conditions is a major challenge.
SERVICE INTERFACES
This interface makes clear provisions on how to handle connections, how to send and receive packets.
and how to inquire about state information of the network. This interface serves the exchange of packets
with one (sometimes, several) communication peers.

GATEWAY
The Gateway is responsible for collecting data from the sensor nodes, aggregating it, and
forwarding it to the target destination. It also provides the necessary security measures for the network
and helps in addressing the scalability and reliability issues.

IEEE 802.15.4
The IEEE 802.15.4 MAC protocol:

• IEEE 802.15.4 is a short-range communication system.

• The standard covers the physical layer and the MAC layer of a low-rate Wireless Personal Area
Network (WPAN).

• The targeted applications for IEEE 802.15.4 are in the area of wireless sensor networks, home
automation, home networking, connecting devices to a PC, home security, and so on.

• Most of these applications require only low-to-medium bitrates (up to some few hundreds of kbps, and
for certain nodes it is highly desirable to reduce the energy consumption to a minimum.

Services and features of IEEE 802.15.4:

The various features and services provided by IEEE 802.15.4 are given below:

• It provides ease of installation, reliable data transfer, short range operation, and extremely low cost for
the devices which operates with limited power and considerable throughput.

• Provides low power consumption.

• Uses slotted CSMA/CA contention schemes.

• Low data rate transmission

• The maximum transmission range is 10-30 m.

• Supported by either fixed or moving devices.

• The standard distinguishes on the MAC layer two types of nodes:

A Full Function Device (FFD) can be a PAN coordinator (PAN -Personal Area Network), a or a device.
FFD contains the complete set of MAC services.

•A Reduced Function Device (RFD) can operate only as a device. RFD contains a reduced set of MAC
services.

IEEE 802.15.4 Topologies:

This standard supports for two types of network topologies:

- Star topology
- Peer to peer topology

Physical layer:

• The physical layer defines frequency, power, modulation, and other conditions of the wireless
link. IEEE 802.15.4 operates on two frequency bands: 868/915 MHz and 2400 MHz.
• This standard uses Direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) modulation.
• The Binary Phase-shift Keying (BPSK) is used in the two low speed version and Offset and
Quadrature (O-QPSK) is used for the high data rate version.

MAC layer:

• When many nodes content for the channel, the MAC layer controls the access of the common wireless
channel. It provides fair sharing of the common channel using suitable contention scheme.

• When the upper layers find out network throughput degradation below a certain threshold, the MAC
layer will invoke energy detection algorithms to scan energy levels of the channels.

• Based on the determined energy level of the channels, the upper layers will switch the communication
to the channel with the lowest energy.

• IEEE 802.15.4 uses Carrier sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA-CA) contention
scheme for allowing multiple users to access the same channel at different times without interference.

• Based on the CSMA/CA algorithm, which requires listening to the channel before transmitting to
reduce collisions with other ongoing transmission
• The MAC layer is responsible for providing services such as flow control, beacon management, channel
access, acknowledgement frame delivery, association and disassociation, frame validations, maintaining
the guaranteed time slot mechanism.

Super frame structure:

• The coordinator of a network operating in the beaconed mode organizes channel access and data
transmission with the help of a super frame structure displayed in Figure.

• In a super frame a dedicated PAN coordinator transmits super frame beacons in predetermined
intervals.

• These intervals can be short as 15 ms or as long as 245 seconds.

• The super frame is subdivided into an active period and an inactive period. During the inactive period,
all nodes including the coordinator can switch off their transceivers and go into sleep state. The nodes
have to wake up immediately before the inactive period ends to receive the next beacon.

• The active period is subdivided into 16 time slots. The first time slot is occupied by the beacon frame
and the remaining time slots are partitioned into a Contention Access Period (CAP) and Contention free
period the nodes.

• All super frames have the same length.

• The beacon frame format is sent in the first slot of each super frame.

• The beacons are used to synchronize the attached devices, to identify the PAN, and describe the
structure of super frame.

• A device can transmit at any time during the slot, but must complete its transaction before next super
frame beacon.

• The channel access in time slots is contention based, PAN coordinator may assign time slot to a single
device that requires a dedicated bandwidth.

• Guaranteed Time Slots (GTSs).

• Contention Access period (CAP)
Contention Free period (CFP)

• The coordinator is active during the entire active period.

• The associated devices are active in the GTS (Guaranteed Time Slots) phase only in time slots allocated
to them; in all other GTS slots they can enter sleep mode.

• In the CAP, a device can shut down its transceiver if it has neither any own data to transmit nor any
data to fetch from the coordinator.

Slotted CSMA-CA protocol

• When nodes have to send data or management/control packets during the CAP, they use a slotted
CSMA protocol.

• To reduce the probability of collisions, the protocol uses random delays; it is thus a CSMA-CA protocol
(CSMA with Collision Avoidance).

ZIGBEE
ZigBee is a Personal Area Network task group with low rate task group 4. It is a technology of home
networking. ZigBee is a technological standard created for controlling and sensing the network.

Types of ZigBee Devices:

Zigbee Coordinator Device: It communicates with routers. This device is used for connecting the
devices.
Zigbee Router: It is used for passing the data between devices.
Zigbee End Device: It is the device that is going to be controlled.
Features of Zigbee:

1.Stochastic addressing: A device is assigned a random address and announced. Mechanism

for address conflict resolution. Parents node don’t need to maintain assigned address table.
2. Link Management: Each node maintains quality of links to neighbors. Link quality is
used as link cost in routing.
3. Frequency Agility: Nodes experience interference report to channel manager, which then
selects another channel
4. Asymmetric Link: Each node has different transmit power and sensitivity. Paths may be
asymmetric.
5. Power Management: Routers and Coordinators use main power. End Devices use
batteries.

Architecture of Zigbee:

Zigbee architecture is a combination of 6 layers.

1. Application Layer
2. Application Interface Layer
3. Security Layer
4. Network Layer
5. Medium Access Control Layer
6. Physical Layer

•
 • Physical layer:
The lowest two layers i.e the physical and the MAC (Medium Access Control) Layer
are defined by the IEEE 802.15.4 specifications. The Physical layer is closest to the
hardware and directly controls and communicates with the Zigbee radio. The
physical layer translates the data packets in the over-the-air bits for transmission and
vice-versa during the reception.
• Medium Access Control layer (MAC layer):
The layer is responsible for the interface between the physical and network layer.
The MAC layer is also responsible for providing PAN ID and also network discovery
through beacon requests.
• Network layer:
This layer acts as an interface between the MAC layer and the application layer. It
is responsible for mesh networking.
• Application layer:
The application layer in the Zigbee stack is the highest protocol layer and it consists
of the application support sub-layer and Zigbee device object. It contains
manufacturer-defined applications.

BLUETOOTH

Bluetooth is universal for short-range wireless voice and data communication. It is a Wireless Personal
Area Network (WPAN) technology and is used for exchanging data over smaller distances.

Bluetooth Architecture:

The architecture of Bluetooth defines two types of networks:

1. Piconet
2. Scatternet
Piconet:

• Piconet is a type of Bluetooth network that contains one primary node called the
master node and seven active secondary nodes called slave nodes.
• There is a total of 8 active nodes which are present at a distance of 10 meters.
• The communication between the primary and secondary nodes can be one-to-one or
one-to-many.
• Possible communication is only between the master and slave; Slave-slave
communication is not possible.
• It also has 255 parked nodes; these are secondary nodes and cannot take participation
in communication unless it gets converted to the active state.

Scatternet:

• It is formed by using various piconets.

• A slave that is present in one piconet can act as master or we can say primary in
another piconet.
• This kind of node can receive a message from a master in one piconet and deliver the
message to its slave in the other piconet where it is acting as a master.
• This type of node is referred to as a bridge node. A station cannot be mastered in two
piconets.
Radio (RF) layer: It specifies the details of the air interface, including frequency, the use of frequency
hopping and transmit power. It performs modulation/demodulation of the data into RF signals. It
defines the physical characteristics of Bluetooth transceivers. It defines two types of physical links:
connection-less and connection-oriented.

Baseband Link layer: The baseband is the digital engine of a Bluetooth system and is equivalent to
the MAC sublayer in LANs. It performs the connection establishment within a piconet, addressing,
packet format, timing and power control.
Link Manager protocol layer: It performs the management of the already established links which
includes authentication and encryption processes. It is responsible for creating the links, monitoring
their health, and terminating them gracefully upon command or failure.

Logical Link Control and Adaption (L2CAP) Protocol layer: It is also known as the heart of the
Bluetooth protocol stack. It allows the communication between upper and lower layers of the Bluetooth
protocol stack. It packages the data packets received from upper layers into the form expected by lower
layers. It also performs segmentation and multiplexing.
Service Discovery Protocol (SDP) layer: It is short for Service Discovery Protocol. It allows
discovering the services available on another Bluetooth-enabled device.

RF comm layer: It is a cabal replacement protocol. It is short for Radio Frontend Component. It
provides a serial interface with WAP and OBEX. It also provides emulation of serial ports over the
logical link control and adaption protocol(L2CAP). The protocol is based on the ETSI standard TS
07.10.

OBEX: It is short for Object Exchange. It is a communication protocol to exchange objects

between 2 devices.
WAP: It is short for Wireless Access Protocol. It is used for internet access.
TCS: It is short for Telephony Control Protocol. It provides telephony service. The basic
function of this layer is call control (setup & release) and group management for the
gateway serving multiple devices.

Application layer: It enables the user to interact with the application.

PHYSICAL LAYER AND TRANSCEIVER DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS

• Energy usage profile

• Choice of modulation scheme
• Dynamic modulation scaling
• Antenna considerations

Energy usage profile

• The choice of a small transmit power leads to an energy consumption profile different from other
wireless devices like cell phones.
• The radiated energy is small, typically on the order of 0 dBm (corresponding to 1 mW). On the
other hand, the overall transceiver (RF front end and baseband part) consumes much more energy
than is actually radiated.
 • Small transmit powers the transmit and receive modes consume more or less the same power; it
is even possible that reception requires more power than transmission depending on the
transceiver architecture, the idle mode’s power consumption can be less or in the same range as
the receive power.
• To reduce average power consumption in a low-traffic wireless sensor network, keeping the
transceiver in idle mode all the time would consume significant amounts of energy.

Choice of modulation scheme:

• A crucial point is the choice of modulation scheme. Several factors have to be balanced here: the
required and desirable data rate and symbol rate, the implementation complexity, the relationship
between radiated power and target BER, and the expected channel characteristics.
• To maximize the time a transceiver can spend in sleep mode, the transmit times should be
minimized. The higher the data rate offered by a transceiver/modulation, the smaller the time
needed to transmit a given amount of data and, consequently, the smaller the energy
consumption.
• The power consumption of a modulation scheme depends much more on the symbol rate than on
the data rate.
• M-ary modulation requires more complex digital and analog circuitry than 2-ary modulation, for
example, to parallelize user bits into m-ary symbols.
• Many M-ary modulation schemes require for increasing m an increased Eb/N0 ratio and
consequently an increased radiated power to achieve the same target BER and others become
less and less bandwidth efficient.
• However, in wireless sensor network applications with only low to moderate bandwidth
requirements, a loss in bandwidth efficiency can be more tolerable than an increased radiated
power to compensate Eb/N0 losses.
• The optimal decision would have to properly balance the modulation scheme and other measures
to increase transmission robustness.
Dynamic modulation scaling

• Even if it is possible to determine the optimal scheme for a given combination of BER target,
range, packet sizes and so forth, such an optimum is only valid for short time; as soon as one of
the constraints changes, the optimum can change, too. In addition, other constraints like delay or
the desire to achieve high throughput can dictate to choose higher modulation schemes.
• For the case of m-ary QAM and a target BER of 10−5, a model has been developed that uses the
symbol rate B and the number of levels per symbol m as parameters.
• This model expresses the energy required per bit and also the achieved delay per bit (the inverse
of the data rate), taking into account that higher modulation levels need higher radiated energy.
• The energy per bit depends much more on m than on B.
• Since the symbol rate is kept fixed, the approach is to choose the smallest m that satisfies the
required data rate and which thus minimizes the required energy per bit.

Antenna considerations:

• The antennas should be spaced apart at least 40–50 % of the wavelength used to achieve good
effects from diversity. For 2.4 GHz, this corresponds to a spacing of between 5 and 6 cm between
the antennas, which is hard to achieve with smaller cases.
• The radio waves emitted from an antenna close to the ground – typical in some applications – are
faced with higher path-loss coefficients than the common value α = 2 for free-space
communication.
• Typical attenuation values in such environments, which are also normally characterized by
obstacles.
• Depending on the application, antennas must not protrude from the casing of a node, to avoid
possible damage to it. These restrictions, in general, limit the achievable quality and
characteristics of an antenna for wireless sensor nodes.
• The capacity of a Rayleigh fading channel with power control can be higher than the capacity of
an AWGN channel with the same average radiated power.