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A real-time empirical study of BIOSARP based wireless sensor network testbed

Conference Paper · October 2012

DOI: 10.1109/ICSENS.2012.6411460

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Abstract:
Wireless sensor network (WSN) deploys tiny wireless sensor nodes to communicate with each other with limited processing speed, power and
security measures. A recent WSN routing protocol defined as Secure Real-Time Load Distribution (SRTLD) has been developed to provide realtime
transfer, high delivery ratio, and longer sensor node lifetime. However, SRTLD uses broadcast packets to perform neighbor discovery for every
packet transfer every hop, thus consume high energy. The proposed novel Biological inspired Self-Organized Secure Autonomous Routing Protocol
(BIOSARP) enhances SRTLD with autonomous routing mechanism. The BIOSARP routing protocol depends on the optimal forwarding decision
obtained by Ant Colony Optimization (ACO). The pheromone value in ACO is computed based on end-to-end delay, remaining battery power, and
packet reception rate metrics similar to SRTLD. The proposed BIOSARP has been designed to reduce overhead broadcast packet in order to
minimize the delay, packet loss and power consumption in WSN. In this paper we present the architecture and detailed real outdoor experimental
testbed results of BIOSARP. The experimental testbed results show that BIOSARP outperforms SRTLD by 24.75% in terms of delivery ratio. The
empirical study confirms that BIOSARP offers better performance than SRTLD and can be practically implemented in WSN applications as
structural and environmental monitoring, battlefield surveillance.

Published in: SENSORS, 2012 IEEE

Date of Conference: 28-31 Oct. 2012 INSPEC Accession Number: 13256519

Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 17 January 2013 DOI: 10.1109/ICSENS.2012.6411460

ISBN Information: Publisher: IEEE

ISSN Information: Conference Location: Taipei, Taiwan

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Contents

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SECTION I.
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Background Full Text

View References Networks and telecommunication systems are becoming increasingly complex, because of the size Abstract
and heterogeneity of networks, as well as the complex interaction among network elements. In
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telecommunication system, wireless networks have witnessed tremendous development and Authors
exponential growth due to the development of heterogeneous devices and applications [1]. Today,
there is an immense increase in convergence and integration of different heterogeneous wireless Figures
Print networks that guarantees efficient and effective communication. Primarily these technologies
includes: wireless wide area networks (WWANs), wireless local area networks (WLANs) and References
Request Permissions wireless personal area networks (WPANs). For example, the Bluetooth, wireless sensor network
(WSN) and Ultra Wide Bands (UWB) are classified as WPANs. Cellular networks such as GSM are
Citations
categorized as WWAN, and finally there is High Performance Radio Local Area Networks
Export to Collabratec
(HiperLANs).
Keywords

Alerts The recent high-tech advancement, digital electronics and micro-electro-mechanical systems
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(MEMS), has directed towards low-power, multifunctional, low-cost wireless sensor nodes
development [2]. Wireless sensor nodes consist of communicating components, sensing, and data
processing. These miniaturized devices named as wireless sensor nodes transfer information within
short distances [2]. The enormous wireless sensor nodes communicate with each other in adhoc
multihop routing to form a system named as wireless sensor network (WSN) depends on
IEEE802.15.4 standard [3]. WSN facilitates a user to productively sense and monitor from a
distance [4]. The single wireless sensor node can be very small in size and accordingly the cost of
WSN devices also varies. Cost restrictions and size in addition to the computational speed, memory,
energy and bandwidth are the constraints that increase complexity of WSN [3].

The WSN challenges like power consumption, additional delay, and packet loss need new
mechanism. In order to address autonomous capability, we have proposed BIOlogical inspired self-
organized Secure Autonomous Routing Protocol (BIOSARP) [5] that depends on ant colony
optimization (ACO). BIOSARP is an extension of prior work done by [6]. The autonomous
mechanism is capable to overcome the above mentioned adaptability issues specially energy
efficiency in wireless sensor network. The multi-agent ant colony mechanism was first proposed in
[7] to solve difficult combinatorial optimization problems such as the ACO metaheuristic, the
quadratic assignment problem (QAP) and the traveling salesman problem (TSP). “ACO algorithms
are a class of constructive meta-heuristic algorithms that mimic the cooperative behavior of real
ants to achieve complex computations and have been proven to be very efficient to many different
discrete optimization problems”. Related literature on ACO based routing protocols have been
previously reviewed in [5].

Recent routing protocol SRTLD [6] for WSN has improved performance as compared to LQER,
MMSpeed, RTPC and RPAR in [6]. SRTLD is a geo-directional based localized routing protocol that
generates one hop optimal node decision. The optimal decision depends on end-to-end delay, PRR
and remaining battery power. The decision and geo-cast forwarding provides real-time
communication, load distribution to enhance WSN lifetime and better data throughput over WSN.
SRTLD routing protocols possess some limitations. The major one is the broadcast of hello
messages send at every hop to discover new neighboring nodes. The broadcast at every hop causes
high power consumption, additional delay, and packet loss and thus less throughput in WSN.

In this paper we discuss the development and implementation of BIOSARP test bed. BIOSARP test
bed has been developed on a network using TELOSB radio sensor boards. TELOSB consist of low
power transceiver based on CC2420 ChipCon chip [8] that employs IEEE 802.15.4 physical and
MAC layers specifications. TELOSB uses built-in humidity, temperature and light sensor. The
network performance has been evaluated in terms of delivery ratio. The next section shows the
development of BIOSARP in TELOSB and practical implementation of BIOSARP test bed and

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development of BIOSARP in TELOSB and practical implementation of BIOSARP test bed and
comparison. The Conclusion is narrated under section 3.

SECTION II.
Testbed Implementation and Results

The WSN test bed is made of TELOSB which are developed by Crossbow Technology Inc. [9]. The
TELOSB mote is constitute of sensor processor and radio device. It approaches a 2.4GHz ISM band
based on IEEE 802.15.4 radio standard. TELOSB can be connected to a PC through USB port. A4
battery is plugged in order to switch On TELOSB. Fig. 1 illustrates the TELOSB board. Appendix A
describes the detail specifications of TELOSB. Each mote operates on the hardware and software
including the TinyOS as the operating system. The motes are programmed by the programming
language nesC programming language, Java programming language that includes avr-gcc and msp-
gcc compilers, serial forwarder GUI and surge application.

Figure 1. TELOSB Mote, a) TELOSB Board, b) TELOSB Block Diagram [9]

A. Configuring and Programming TELOSB

TinyOS does not contain a single network stack; rather application designers build their own stack
by selecting compatible one among the given components, e.g., multi-hop routing. TOSSIM is used
that help to debug, test, and analyze algorithms easily. Before flashing TinyOS code, we can
examine using debuggers development tool [10]. Further, TinyViz a Java-based GUI is used to
visualize, modify and inspect the simulation. TinyViz functions include are inspecting debug
messages, radio and UART packets, etc. [11].

Under TinyOS the programming language NesC is used to access hardware resources as it is based
on C executable code that provides all the low-level features necessary. Restrictions on the C++
programming models allows NesC compiler to perform complete analysis of the program, which
includes data race detection and it improve the reliability.

The API package of Java Communication has been installed on PC. The API package contains the
support for Windows PCs based serial and parallel ports. The API package enables Java program to
communicate with the mote. The Java application should also be selected under the options while
installing TinyOS.

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installing TinyOS.

B. Development of BIOSARP Routing Protocol in Test bed

The test bed is divided into two parts development of BIOSARP routing protocol and TinyOS
application. TinyOS application performs periodic sensor reading and delivers the data packet to
the sink using BIOSARP routing protocol. BIOSARP and TinyOS application have been
programmed based on nesC programming language. The source codes of functional modules had
been written based on the algorithms that were explained in [5]. The BIOSARP code has been
compiled and run using msp-gcc.

Fig. 2 shows the source code of the neighborhood management which search for the optimal
neighboring next hop node by broadcasting to all neighboring nodes. Node which broadcast RTR
packets receives the RTR replies from neighboring nodes. The RTR reply also contains the
neighboring node parameters. These neighboring node parameters are analyzed and stored in the
neighbor or routing table in front of its respective node IDs.

Figure 2. Neighborhood Management Source Code

The pheromone value is computed based on the neighboring node parameters and is also stored in
routing table as exposed in Fig. 2. The insertion of records in routing table is handled by insertion
state. If routing table is full, the new neighboring nodes records are compared with the old records
for replacement by neighbor replacement process. Otherwise, the new records are directly inserted
in the routing table of current node that is updated every 10 seconds. Hence, the optimal next hop
selection is based on the stored pheromone value.

C. Configuring and Flashing TELOSB Motes

The power level and transmission channel are configured based on IEEE 802.15.4 physical layer.
The TELOSB radio transmitter can be tuned with different frequencies that are numbered from 11
(2.405 GHz) to 26 (2.480 GHz) each separated by 5 MHz [9]. By using CC2420Control. TunePreset
(uint8_t chnl) function, the channel can be changed or selected at run-time in TinyOS. Channel 11
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(uint8_t chnl) function, the channel can be changed or selected at run-time in TinyOS. Channel 11
(2480 MHz) is selected by default. The RF transmission power is programmable from 0 dBm (1
mW) to −25dBm. Lower transmission power is an advantage for sensor node to enhance its life
time and reducing interference. The battery power is consumed less by reducing transmitter power
from 17.5 mA (at full power) to the lowest level of 8.5 mA.

When the program is uploaded to the sensor node, the node ID and the uploading port defined in
the programming code. In order to compile TELOSB mote for real test bed application,
maketelosbcommandistypedincygwinconsoleatthedirectoryof desiredapplication.make telosb
reinstall,0 bsl, COM3 is typed in the cygwin console under the directory or path of desired
application to upload the execution code inside the mote. The execution code is uploaded with node
ID 0 through USB port as a virtual COM port (COM3). In order to identify the COM port that
TELOSB is using, the motelist command is typed in the cygwin console. This command will find the
COM port of TELOSB and fetch the virtual COM number (COM4 in the previous command). The
Boot Strap Loader (bsl) is responsible for loading the execution program to TELOSB.

D. BIOSARP WSN Testbed Experimental Results

The BIOSARP has been realized in real test bed using 10 TELOSB sensor nodes. Fig. 3 shows the
picture of sensor nodes configuration and uploading of code into the sensor node through USB port
for TELOSB. Table 1 shows the code size of BIOSARP and SRTLD in TELOSB.

Figure 3. Programming Sensor Node

TABLE I. Coding Size Of Biosarp And Srtld

TELOSB
Comparison
Flash Memory RAM
BIOSARP 31496 bytes 247 bytes
SRTLD 32212 bytes 207 bytes

E. BIOSARP WSN Test Bed Setup

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E. BIOSARP WSN Test Bed Setup

The behavior of BIOSARP in WSN test bed has been verified. The test bed performance is analyzed
in terms of average packet delay and packet delivery ratio. The result of BIOSARP is compared with
SRTLD routing protocol in WSN. In this work, 10 wireless sensor nodes are distributed in a
20m × 15m area as graphically shown in Fig. 4. All nodes will generate the data towards sink node
which is node 0. The traffic generated from all nodes is at constant bit rate (CBR).

Figure 4. Network Grid

Fig. 5 shows the experimental WSN testbed carried out in an open field using 10 nodes. Many-to-
one traffic pattern is used in BIOSARP routing protocol using unicast forwarding mechanism. The
end-to-end deadline and the experimental duration were fixed at 250ms and 100s respectively in
real test bed. To emulate low data rate for IEEE 802.15.4, the traffic load is varied from 0.2 to 2
packets per second.

Figure 5. Field Test of BIOSARP based WSN Testbed

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First we programmed the TELOSB motes with the previous SRTLD routing protocol and save the
obtained results. Then the motes were re-flashed with BIOSARP algorithm and performed the same
scenario based experimentation. The BIOSARP simulation study was carried out using similar
topology as in experimental scenario. The outcomes of BIOSARP testbed is first compared with the
simulation results.

F. Test Bed Results of BIOSARP

The results in Fig. 6 show that BIOSARP routing protocol in the simulation environment
experiences an average of 10% higher delivery ratio compared to the real test bed implementation.
The difference could be due to the simulation propagation model (shadowing) differs from the real
test bed environment. Various propagation model parameters affect the signal strength including
interference, diffraction, reflection and fading. The result of simulation and real test bed also differs
because of the microprocessor used in the motes. As in simulation the processor runs at 3000 MHz
while in TELOSB the processor operates at 8MHz which is very slow compared to the PC in
simulation.

Figure 6. Testbed and Simulation

The results in Fig. 7 show that BIOSARP experience higher delivery ratio by an average of 24.75%
as compared to SRTLD. Since the recommended packet rate for TELOSB is 0.5 packet/s. Therefore
in the experiment it is best to set for multi-hop communication to avoid congestion and or overflow
of the communication queue [12].

Figure 7. Experimental Results

Fig. 8 shows the header fields and data fields of packets received in the BIOSARP test bed. In Fig. 8,
the packet travels 4 hops between sink 0 and the source node 8.

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Figure 8. Receiving Packets in Testbed

SECTION III.
Conclusion

The research article presents the development of the real test bed of BIOSARP routing protocol.
The test bed consists of 10 sensor nodes (TELOSB). TOSSIM was used to compile BIOSARP routing
protocol on the PC. Before the BIOSARP algorithm is flashed into the sensor mote, it has been
simulated by using TOSSIM to test, debug, and analyze the algorithm. The simulation is performed
in order to save time and minimize hardware problem. The test bed results of BIOSARP routing
protocol outperforms that of SRTLD by an average of 24.75%. Nevertheless, the BIOSARP routing
protocol based WSN performs well and its adaptable behavior to the environmental changes
ensures reliable data transfer.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Special thanks to the researchers at Telematic Research Group (TRG), UTM and to the officials, and
researchers at Center of Excellence in Information Assurance (CoEIA), King Saud University.

Keywords

IEEE Keywords
Wireless sensor networks, Routing protocols, Wireless communication, Routing, Biological system
modeling, Communication system security, Delay

INSPEC: Controlled Indexing

wireless sensor networks, optimisation, routing protocols

INSPEC: Non-Controlled Indexing

battlefield surveillance, real-time empirical study, BIOSARP based wireless sensor network
testbed, wireless sensor nodes, WSN routing protocol, secure real-time load distribution, SRTLD,
real-time transfer, broadcast packets, neighbor discovery, packet transfer, biological inspired self-
organized secure autonomous routing protocol, BIOSARP, autonomous routing mechanism, ant
colony optimization, ACO, battery power, packet reception rate metrics, power consumption,
outdoor experimental testbed, environmental monitoring, structural monitoring

Authors

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6411460/ Page 8 of 10
A real-time empirical study of BIOSARP based wireless sensor network testbed - IEEE Conference Publication 10/23/17, 9*56 AM

K. Saleem
Center of Excellence in Inf. Assurance (CoEIA), King Saud Univ. (KSU),
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

N. Fisal
Telematic Res. Group (TRG), Univ. Teknol. Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia

M. A. Baharudin
Telematic Res. Group (TRG), Univ. Teknol. Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia

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