Introduction to Wireless

Sensor Networks
1.0 Introduction to Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

The rapid progress of embedded system technologies has actuated the integration of
computation and control in human life and physical environment. The emergence of these
technologies inspires human [1] not only to equip large electrical appliances like washing
machine with embedded computation and control, but also smaller items like dispensable goods,
groceries and even living and working spaces can be endowed with such capabilities. The
success of those human-machine integration applications embarks people to move one step
further in communication technology. In the last few years, a new class network has appeared to
facilitate the needs of monitoring and control of physical environment especially in remote and
unreachable areas. Such networks are called wireless sensor networks (WSNs).
WSNs [1] consist of individual nodes that are able to interact with their environment by
sensing and controlling physical parameters. The tiny nodes which are fitted with an onboard
processor and a small storage unit must be able to communicate wirelessly among themselves in
a short range. The onboard processor with the aid of the storage unit [2] manages the procedure
that makes the sensor node collaborate with the other nodes to carry out the assigned tasks. In
other words, these nodes have to perform a cooperative effort in order to provide acceptable
efficiency due to some limitations caused by the nature of the network. This feature enables the
nodes [2] to locally carry out simple computations and transmit only required and partially
processed data, instead of sending the raw data to the nodes responsible for the fusion. However,
the sensor nodes need to have self-organizing capabilities in order to suit the intended feature.
Some of the applications of WSNs are listed in [1]. These networks are widely used in
disaster relief applications, environment control and biodiversity mapping, intelligent buildings,
facility management, machine surveillance and preventive maintenance, precision agriculture,
medicine and health care, logistics and telematics. To cater innumerable applications, WSNs
need to have a special feature such that [2] the position of the nodes need not to be engineered
and predetermined. This allows random deployment of the sensor nodes in inaccessible terrains
for applications like disaster relief and environment control and diversity mapping.
The communication between nodes in WSNs is somewhat in an ad hoc manner almost for all
their applications. This requires the realization of WSNs to adapt wireless ad hoc networking
techniques. There are many protocols and algorithms have been proposed for traditional wireless

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ad hoc networks. However, they are not suitable to the unique features and application
requirements of sensor networks. The differences between a WSN and ad hoc network are [2]:

• The number of sensor nodes in a WSN is higher by several orders of magnitude

compared to the nodes in an ad hoc network.
• Sensor nodes are densely deployed.
• Sensor nodes are prone to failures.
• The topology of a sensor network changes very frequently.
• Sensor nodes mainly use a broadcast communication paradigm, whereas most of ad hoc
networks are based on point-to-point communications.
• Sensor nodes are limited in power, computational capacities and memory.
• Sensor nodes may not have global identification (ID) because of the large amount of
overhead and large number of sensors.

The authors of [3] concluded three characteristics that a sensor network need to have, which are:

• Dynamic networking – the devices will be deployed densely and rapidly.

• Self-calibration – the devices need to calibrate themselves automatically and adapt to
their changes in their environment independently.
• Peer-to-peer communication – devices need to be able to talk between themselves to
develop a multi-dimensional view of sensing environment.

Based on the characteristics, many researchers are currently engaged in developing schemes,
protocols and algorithms to fulfill the requirements of WSNs. Basically, the goal of all
researches being carried out is to contribute in realization of an energy-efficient, self-organized,
and easy to deploy WSNs.

2.0 Sensor Network Architecture and Design Factors

In WSNs, the sensor nodes are usually scattered and densely deployed in a sensor field as
shown in Figure 1. A sensor node or source is defined in [1] as any entity in the network that can

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provide information or feedback about an operation. On the other hand, a sink is defined as the
entity where information is required.

Figure 1 Sensor nodes scattered in a sensor field [2].

Each source in the network is capable to collect data and route back to the sink. In most
of the time, sensor nodes are scattered randomly over an area of interest. Thus, direct
communication between source and sink is not always possible. Only nodes that are located very
close to the sink can directly route the data to the sink. Direct communication between source
and sink may consume
ume a lot of energy. As a solution to that problem, data
ata are routed to the sink
by a multihop architecture, as example shown in Figure 1,, the data flow th
through the route of
ABCDE to the sink. The sink will further propagate the received data to the task ma
manager node
through the internet or satellite network. Another reason of implementing
ing multihop architecture
in WSNs is to solve large distances and obstacles especially in environmental or agriculture
applications, or that operate in difficult radio environments
environ with strong attenuation such as in
buildings. Thus relay stations are used to overcome such limited distances, with the data packets
taking multi hops from the source to the sink [1].
Nonetheless,, great care should be taken when applying multihopping since [4, 5] it may
introduce additional MAC,, topology and routing protocol overheads that would reduce the
efficiency of the networks. Hence,
Hence according to [4], energy-efficient
nt communication protocols

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must be designed around accurate energy models of the targeted hardware since multihop saves
energy only if the attenuation dominates the static energy consumption of the hardware. The
same issue has also been arisen in [6]. The authors stressed that the tendency of energy being
invested in a packet at each hop in high which leads to the cost of dropping a packet varies with
packet and place. The routing issue will be discussed further in subsection 3.3.
Since WSNs have a wide range of application types, a single realization of WSN is
almost impossible. However, there are common characteristic requirements or design factors that
can be shared among most of the applications. Several factors that need to be considered in
designing a WSN have been addressed in [1] and some of them are also discussed in [2]. The
design factors include fault tolerance, lifetime, scalability, operating environment, sensor
network topology, hardware constraints, transmission media and power consumption.

Fault tolerance is the ability to sustain sensor network functionalities without any interruption
due to sensor node failures [7, 8]. Since the sensor nodes are prone to failures, fault tolerance
issue is crucial in designing a WSN. Physical damage, environmental interference or lacking of
power may lead to the sensor node failure. To make a WSN reliable, the failure of sensor node
should not affect the overall task of the sensor network. In [7], the reliability, Rk(t) or fault
tolerance is modeled using the Poisson distribution to capture the probability of not having a
failure within the interval (0,t). The formula for fault tolerance is given as [7]:

ܴ௞ ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ = ݁ ିλ ݇ ௧ (1)

Lifetime of the energy supplies for sensor nodes in a WSN is a great factor to deal with. Since
WSNs are favorable for remote applications where replacing or recharging the energy sources is
usually not practicable, the energy supplied must be sufficient for a given mission time or as long
as possible. As an alternative or supplement to energy supplies, a limited power source such as
solar cells might also be available on a sensor node.

Scalability is another important factor of network algorithms and protocols design. A WSN may
contain of a great number of sensor nodes. The number of sensor nodes may be on the order of
hundreds or thousands or may reach millions, depending on the application of the networks.

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Hence, new schemes must be able to cope with this number of nodes and the high density of the
sensor networks.

Operating environment of WSNs may be in the interior of large machinery, at the bottom of an
ocean, in a biologically or chemically contaminated field, in a battlefield beyond the enemy
lines, in a wide forest and may be a home or large building. Dealing with this type of
environments, WSNs need to be designed with the capability to work unattended and self-
organized.

Sensor network topology – In [2], three phases of network topology issues have been
examined: Predeployment and deployment phase, post-deployment phase and redeployment of
additional nodes phase. The topology of WSNs changes frequently especially in mobile
networks. This is another challenge in algorithms and protocols development.

Hardware constraints – A sensor node consists of four basic components: a sensing unit, a
processing unit, a transceiver unit and a power unit. The function of every unit is explained in
[2]. All of these units must be fitted in a small box in the size of a matchbox [9] or may be
smaller than a cubic centimeter. The size of sensor nodes should be as tiny as it can so that they
are easy to deploy.

Transmission media for WSNs must be chosen such that it is available worldwide [2]. In
WSNs, the sensor nodes are linked by a wireless medium such as radio frequency, infrared and
optical media. Current technology of sensor nodes hardware is based on RF design circuit. RF is
the best medium as it does not require a line of sight (LOS) between sender and receiver.

Power consumption is said to be the most crucial factor in WSNs design since the sensor nodes
lifetime is dependent on the battery lifetime. A microelectronic wireless sensor only can be
equipped with [2] less than 0.5Ah, 1.2V. A sensor node consumes power to accomplish three
tasks: sensing, communication and data processing. The malfunctioning of a few nodes can
cause significant topological changes and might require rerouting of packets and reorganization

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of the network. Thus, all aspect of sensor nodes, from hardware module to network protocols
must be designed to be extremely energy-efficient.
energy

3.0 Protocol Stack of WSNs

WSN

The protocol stack used in the sensor nodes of WSNs is given in Figure 2. The stack
consists of the physical layer, data link layer (Medium Access Control-MAC)
MAC), network layer,
transport layer and application layer. Apart from the five basic layers, the stack protocol may
also contain power management plane, mobility plane and task management plane as described
in [2].

Figure 2 Protocol stack in wireless network [10].

Generally, the physical layer addresses the needs of simple but robust
r modulation,
transmission and receiving techniques. The medium access control (MAC) protocol must be
power-aware
aware and able to minimize collision with neighbors’ broadcasts. The network layer takes
care of routing the data supplied by transport layer. The
The transport layer helps to maintain the
flow of data if the sensor networks application requires it. In the application layer, different
d
application software can be built depending on the sensing tasks.
The authors in [2] listed some research issues in physi
physical layer,, MAC layer, network
layer and transport layer as summarized in Table 1.

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 Table 1 Open research issues as suggested in [2].
Stack Layer Research issues Description
Modulation schemes The modulation schemes to be
developed must be simple, robust and
low-power.
Strategies to overcome signal
Physical propagation effects
Hardware design The hardware of sensor nodes must
consist of tiny, low-power and low-cost
transceiver, sensing unit as well as
processing unit.
MAC for mobile sensor networks The algorithms proposed in previous
works can be improved to fulfill mobile
sensor networks requirements.
Determination of lower bounds
on the energy required for sensor
network self-organization
Error control coding schemes This issue is very important especially
Data link (MAC)
in network applications like mobile
tracking and machine monitoring.
Power-saving modes of operation This mode of operation is to prolong the
lifetime of sensor nodes. But, without
careful management of enumeration and
transition, the efficiency of the network
may be reduced.
Improvement of available
network layer schemes:, flooding,
Network gossiping, SPIN, directed
diffusion, SAR, LEACH and
SMECN
New schemes for transport layer
Transport
protocols.

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3.1 Link layer protocols

Link layer protocols are used to add information bits to the data bits to protect them
against channel errors. Forward error correction (FEC) protocols add controlled redundancy to
the data in order to enable reliable transmission of data over unreliable channels. Typical channel
coding system is shown in Figure 3.

Info Source Channel Noisy Channel Source Info

Source Coder Coder Channel Decoder Decoder Sink

Figure 3 Typical channel coding system [10].

The channel coding system contains a source coder which reduces redundancy from the
data, followed by a channel coder that adds controlled redundancy to the compressed data. The
channel-coded data are sent over a channel where noise is added to the stream. The channel
decoder at the receiver produces an estimate of the source-coded stream which is sent to the
source decoder which extracts. The extracted data then is fed to the application.
As described in [10], there are two basic types of channel coders for FEC: block coders
and convolutional coders. Block coders take a block of size k and produce a coded block of size
n that depends on only on the information in that block. This produces (n,k) block code, where
there are 2k possible input blocks and 2n possible output blocks. Convolutional coders also take
blocks of size k as input and produce a coded block of size n. However, the output symbol is a
function of not only input block but of the last m input blocks. This represents (n,m,k)
convolutional codewith memory order m. For both block and convolutional codes, the code rate
௞
is ܴ = .
௡

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3.2 Media Access Control (MAC) protocols

MAC protocols are used to create predefined ways for multiple users to share the
channel. There are two fundamentally different ways to share the wireless channel bandwidth
among different nodes. The first method is by using fixed-assignment channel-access methods,
for example time-division multiple access (TDMA), frequency-division multiple access (FDMA,
code-division multiple access (CDMA) and space-division multiple access (SDMA). The second
one is by using random access methods, for example IEEE 802.11, carrier sense multiple access
(CSMA), multiple access collision avoidance (MACA) and MACA for wireless (MACAW) [10].
Though many MAC protocols exist, they all meant for conventional computer networks
and [6] lean toward a fundamental assumption that packet transmissions occur with a stochastic
distribution that is very different from the correlated traffic found in sensor networks.
Furthermore, they aim to support many independent point-to-point flows while the sensor nodes
in WSNs tend to operate as a collective structure. Media access control in sensor networks must
not only be energy efficient but should also allow fair bandwidth allocation to the infrastructure
for all nodes in a multihop network [10]. The capabilities of sensor devices are also very
different from traditional nodes in a computer network. These devices have a very limited
amount of storage, processing power, and most importantly, energy resources. These limitations
certainly impose constraints in the design of the MAC protocol.

3.3 Routing protocols (Network Layer)

At the network layer, the main aim of all researchers is to develop routing protocols that
can provide energy-efficient route setup and reliable relaying of data from the sensor nodes to the
sink so that the lifetime of the network is maximized. Energy-efficient routes can be found based
on the available power, PA in the nodes or the energy required, α for transmission along the
routes [2].The authors of [5] listed four characteristics that prohibit WSNs to adopt the existing
routing protocols of contemporary wireless networks. They are:

• Classical IP-based protocol cannot be applied to WSNs since global addressing is not
possible for the deployment of sheer number of sensor nodes.

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 • The flow of sensed data in WSNs is not in point-to-point manner as it is in typical
communication networks. Instead, the sensed data flows from multiple sources to a
particular sink.
• Redundancy of data traffic is very significant in WSNs since multiple sensors may
generate same data within the vicinity of a phenomenon. Thus, the routing protocols used
in WSNs must be able to eliminating or minimizing such redundancy.
• WSNs require careful resource management since the sensor nodes are tightly
constrained in terms of transmission power, onboard energy, processing capacity and
storage.

Several types of routing protocols have been discussed in [5] which are data centric
protocols, hierarchical protocols, location-based protocols and network flow and QoS-aware
protocols.

3.3.1 Data-centric protocols

As shown in Figure 1, the sensed data is passed to the sink in multihop network which the
data is passed from one node to another before it reaches the sink (destination). This means that
the source has to rely on the assistance of intermediate nodes to forward the packets on its behalf.
An intermediate node as well as the source has to decide to which neighboring node an incoming
packet should be passed on so that it eventually reaches the destination. The act of passing on is
called forwarding [1].

Flooding and gossiping

Two classical mechanisms of data forwarding are flooding and gossiping [1, 5]. These
are the simplest mechanisms since they do not need routing algorithms and topology
maintenance. In flooding, an incoming packet is sent to all neighbors. The packet will reach the
destination as long the source and sink are in the connected component of the network. But a
node should forward packet to the nodes that it have not seen yet to avoid packets circulating
endlessly. In addition, to avoid needless propagation of packet in the case of the sink is not

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reachable, the packets usually carry some form of expiration date such as time to live or
maximum number of hops [1].
[1] On the other hand, gossiping applies a random forwarding
method in which the packet randomly transversing the network in the hope of eventually finding
the sink. One disadvantage of this mechanism is that the packet delay
elay can be substantially large
[1].
As a very straightforward protocol, flooding give several drawbacks as described in [11]
which are implosion, overlap and resource blindness. Figure 4 describes the implosion problem.

Figure 4 The implosion problem

p in flooding protocol [11].
[11]

With referring to the figure, node A starts flooding its data to all of its neighbors which are B and
C. The intermediate nodes (B and C) then send the data to D. This means, D receives two copies
of the same data which wastes the resources. By using gossiping protocol, implosion can be
avoided but in return it may introduce [5] delays in propagation of data through the nodes.
Figure 5 describes
cribes the phenomenon of overlap in flooding protocol. Node A and B cover
the overlapping geographic region, r.. When these two sensors flood their data to C, C receives
two copies of the same data from region r.

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 Figure 5 The overlap problem in flooding protocol [11].
[11]

In flooding protocol, sensor nodes do not update their activities based on the amount of energy
available at a given time (not energy-aware).
energy . This leads to resource blindness unlike the scenario
in embedded sensor networks that adapt
adapts its communication and computation to the state of its
energy resources [11].

Sensor protocols for information via negotiation (SPIN)

Sensor protocol for information via negotiation (SPIN) is another

another data-centric routing
protocol that applies negotiation and resource-adaptation
resource to overcome the problem of implosion
caused by data redundancy and overlapping
overlap of sensing area [11].. The target scenario is a network
where one, several or possibly all nodes have data to disseminate through entire network.
According to [11],, the SPIN family protocols are designed based on two basic principle:

• In order for the wireless networks to operate efficiently and to conserve energy, sensor
applications need
eed to communicate with each other about the data that they already have
and the data they still need to obtain.
• Sensor nodes in the network must monitor and adapt the changes in their own energy
resources to extend the operating lifetime of the system.

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 SPIN uses meta-data
data as the descriptor of sensor data in such a way that [11] the meta-data
descriptor is shorter (in bytes) than sensor data.. This condition is essential for the SPIN to be
beneficial. Meta-data
data negotiation ensures that nodes only transmit data whenever it is necessary
and never wasted energy on useless transmissions.
transmission Meta-data has no specific format. Instead, it is
an application-specific protocol.
protocol
To communicate among themselves, sensor nodes use three types of messages which are
ADV, REQ and DATA. Figure 6 illustratess how these three messages are utilized by sensor
nodes in SPIN protocol.

Figure 6 The mechanism of data dissemination in SPIN protocol [11].

Node A receives new data due to the changes in

in the area of physical phenomenon. Then, node A
starts the data dissemination by advertising (sending ADV message) its data to node B. Node B
responds by sending a request (REQ message) to node A,, informing that it needs the data. Then
node A sends the reall sensed data to node B. Upon receiving the data, node B repeats the same

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process as node A did by sending ADV messages to its neighboring nodes. If the neighbors do
not have the data yet, they will request the data from node B by sending REQ message. Node B
then sends the data to interested neighbors.
The advantage of SPIN is the simplicity of its mechanism. Furthermore, SPIN introduce
the localized topological changes since each node needs to know its adjacent neighbors [11].
Although SPIN managed to decrease energy dissipation by the factor of 3.5 than it is in flooding
and reduces almost half data redundancy
redundancy,, SPIN’s data advertisement cannot guarantee the
delivery of data. This scenario may happen if the sink is very far from the source and the
intermediate nodes that link the source to the sink are not interested in that data [5]. In this case,
the sensed data will never reach the intended destination (sink).

Directed Diffusion

The idea of directed diffusion routing protocol is to diffuse the sensed data through
sensor nodes by using a naming scheme [9],, for the purpose of avoiding unnecessary operations
in network layer, in order to save energy.
energy These protocols imply the use of attribute-value
attribute pairs
for data naming.. A sensing task is disseminated throughout the sensor
sensor networks as an interest for
the named data. This dissemination sets up gradients within the network designed to draw events
(data matching the interest). Then, events flow towards originators of interests along multiple
paths. The sensor network rein
reinforces
forces one or a small number of these paths. Figure 7 illustrates
the mechanism in a simple sensor network.

Figure 7 A simplified schematic for directed diffusion [11].

[11]

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 The mechanism of data dissemination in directed diffusion protocol is initiated by
injecting an interest (in a list of attribute-pairs containing type, rectangular area, duration and
interval) to the network at a sensor that acts as the sink. The sink records the task and
periodically broadcasts an interest message to its neighbors. The initial interest message may
regards as exploratory, thus only contains a higher interval (low data rate) attribute. Since the
interests are not reliably transmitted throughout the network, it is a necessary for the sink to
refresh the interest broadcast. This offers robustness to the network, but in return the network
must give in some space for overheads introduced by this process. The sensor nodes which
received the interest, store the interest (excluding the sink information) in their cache. At one
time, the cache may contain several entries of interest but only active entries determine the cache
size. To save some space in cache memory, directed diffusion allows interest aggregation in
which two or more similar interests are stored in one entry.
Whenever the nodes detect an event that matches the interest, it will send an initial
gradient (respond) to the sink via several paths. The sink then resends the original interest
message through a selected path at a smaller interval (high data rate) to the source (reinforcement
process). The reinforcement process is described in [9]. Upon receiving the original interest
message, the source will send the data to the sink at higher frequency.
Directed diffusion is highly energy efficient since it does not require for network
topology maintenance and the sensed data is diffused on demand. In addition, the caching
capability of the sensor nodes gives an advantage in terms of energy efficiency and data
transmission delay. Besides those two interesting points, this protocol also does not require
addressing mechanism since all communication are established in a neighbor-to-neighbor
manner. However, this protocol is apparently not meant for applications that require continuous
data delivery since it is based on query-driven data delivery model [5]. Another drawback is that
this protocol needs configuration prior to implementation since the naming schemes are
application dependant.
Two protocols that have been developed based on directed diffusion are energy-aware
routing [12] and rumor routing [13]. The authors of [12] proposed an energy-aware routing based
on the argument that in direct diffusion protocol, the sink selects the minimum energy path in the
reinforcement process. However, using the same path frequently will deplete the energy of
intermediate sensor nodes along the path. Hence, they proposed an energy-aware method to

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increase energy efficiency by using multiple paths for a particular task. The paths are chosen by
means of a probability function which depends on the energy consumption of each path. This
approach involves the calculation of total and average energy cost for each path and also the
probability of each node’s neighbors to be in the routing path. Though this approach is said to
increase the energy saving by 21.5% and provide a longer network lifetime by 44%, the
algorithm for the route set up is somewhat complicated.
Rumor routing is meant for applications in which geographic routing criteria are not
applicable such as in detecting chemical concentrations and signature recognition by using
acoustic events. This protocol relies on the thought that in some cases, there are only small
amount of data requested by sensor nodes. Thus, flooding is unnecessary as it will contribute to
energy waste. In rumor routing protocol [13], the generated query is sent for a random walk (by
using agents) until it finds the path to the source of event. Then, the data will be routed back to
the sink through the path. For the case if the path cannot be found, this protocol allows
retransmission of the query. If the path is still cannot be found after several retransmission, the
last option that the network has is to apply flooding. The beauty of this protocol over the original
directed diffusion is that it is tunable to different application requirements. Furthermore, it is able
to handle node failure gracefully, degrading its delivery rate linearly with the number of failed
nodes. Although the event searching is a random process, the probability for the network to
imply flooding as the last resort has been proven to be very small. However, rumor routing
shows a good performance when the number of events is small. In large number of events, this
protocol has trade offs to the cost of maintaining agents and event tables at each node.

Active Query forwarding in Sensor Networks (ACQUIRE)

In [14], the authors proposed a technique for querying sensor networks called ACtive
QUery forwarding In sensoR nEtworks (ACQUIRE). ACQUIRE uses active queries which can
be in a complex form: may contain several sub-queries, each corresponding to a different
variable/interest. The mechanism starts when a querier (sink) issues an active query, which is
then forwarded step by step through a sequence of nodes. Every intermediate node utilizes the
updates received from all nodes within a look-ahead of d hops in order to partially resolve the
query. The active node only triggers a new update if the information in its cache has obsolete.

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The active node then chooses another node to pass the active qquery
uery by means of a random walk
or based on other information such as a guarantee that the active query can be resolved as
maximum as possible. The active query is further passed in the same manner until it is
completely resolved. This means that, the activ
activee query is getting smaller while it travels along
the path. Once the query is completely resol
resolved,
ved, it is sent back through either the reverse or
shortest-path to the sink. Figure 8 illustrates a simple mechanism of ACQUIRE on a one-hop
one
look-ahead.

Figure 8 Illustration
tration of ACQUIRE with a one-hop
one look-ahead (dd=1) [14].

ACQUIRE can provide efficient

effi querying by adjusting the value of the look-ahead
parameter d. As d becomes larger, the active query has to travel in fewer steps in order to be
completely resolved. However, this also raises the update costs. When d is equal to network
diameter, ACQUIRE mechanism is considered irrelevant in which it behaves similar to flooding.
Ass a solution to this drawback, an optimal value of the d for a grid of sensors has to be
determined prior to its implementation.

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3.3.2 Hierarchical Protocols

The main aim of hierarchical routing is to efficiently maintain the energy consumption of
sensor nodes by involving them in multi-hop communication within a particular cluster and by
performing data aggregation and fusion in order to decrease the number of transmitted messages
to the sink [5]. Some works on this type of protocols have been pursued which are low-energy
adaptive clustering hierarchy (LEACH) and threshold sensitive energy-efficient sensor network
protocol (TEEN).

Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH)

LEACH [15] is a self-organizing cluster-based protocol, which distributes the energy

load evenly among the sensors in the network. The nodes in the network organize themselves
into clusters and elect themselves as the cluster-head (CH) by means of a probability function.
The role as a CH is rotated among the nodes in a cluster in order to evenly distribute the energy
load. In LEACH, the CH nodes compress data arriving from nodes that belong to the respective
cluster, and send an aggregated packet to the base station in order to reduce the amount of
information that must be transmitted to the base station.
The operation of LEACH is broken into rounds where the duration of each round is
divided into 4 phases: (1) Advertisement Phase, (2) Cluster Set-up Phase, (3) Schedule Creation
and (4) Data Transmission. The first three phases are group as the set-up phase, while data
transmission is normally notated as the steady-state phase. In order to minimize overhead, the
steady-state phase is made longer than the set-up phase. During set-up phase, LEACH uses
CSMA MAC protocol to access the medium, while during the transmission phase, it uses
TDMA. Multiple clusters communicate among themselves by using CDMA to avoid interference
between adjacent clusters. This protocol is most appropriate when there is a need for constant
monitoring by the sensor network. A user may not need all the data immediately. From the
simulation result, LEACH is said to reduce communication energy by 8 times compared to direct
transmission and minimum transmission-energy routing.

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Threshold Sensitive Energy Efficient Sensor Network Protocol (TEEN)

TEEN [16] is another routing protocol that implies hierarchical cclustering

lustering scheme. This
protocol intends to provide the end user with the ability to dynamically control the tradeoff
between energy efficiency, accuracy and response times. Figure 9 depicts
depict the operation of this
protocol.

Figure 9 Hierarchical clustering in TEEN and APTEEN [16].

[16]

The sensor network architecture of TEEN protocol is based on a hierarchical grouping

where closer nodes are group into clusters (first level clusters). Then, neighboring clusters are
group
roup to form the second level clusters. This
T process is repeated until the sink (base station) is
reached. After the clusters are formed, the cluster head broadcasts two thresholds to the nodes
which are hard and soft thresholds for sensed attributes. Hard threshold is the minimum possible
value of an attribute to trigger a sensor node to switch on its transmitter and transmit to the
cluster head. Thus, the hard threshold allows the nodes to transmit only when the sensed attribute
is in the range of interest,
t, thus this significantly reduces the number of transmissions.
transmissions Once a
node senses a value at or beyond the hard threshold, it transmits data only then the value of that
attribute changes by an amount equal to or greater than the soft threshold. Consequently, soft
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threshold will further reduce the number of transmissions if there is little or no change in the
value of sensed attribute. Both hard and soft threshold values can be adjusted in order to
dynamically control the number of packet transmissions. However, TEEN is not good for
applications where periodic reports are needed since the user may not get any data at all if the
thresholds are not reached.
An extension of TEEN is proposed in [17] namely Adaptive Threshold sensitive Energy
Efficient sensor Network protocol (APTEEN). This improved protocol aims at both capturing
periodic data collections and reacting to time critical events. The architecture is same as in
TEEN. When the base station forms the clusters, the cluster heads broadcast the attributes, the
threshold values, and the transmission schedule to all nodes. Cluster heads also perform data
aggregation in order to save energy. APTEEN supports three different query types: historical (to
analyze past data values); one-time (to take a snapshot view of the network); and persistent (to
monitor an event for a period of time).
From simulation results, TEEN and APTEEN are said to outperform the LEACH
protocol. The experiments have demonstrated that APTEEN’s performance is between LEACH
and TEEN in terms of energy dissipation and network lifetime. TEEN gives the best
performance since it decreases the number of transmissions. The main drawbacks of the two
approaches are the overhead and complexity of forming clusters in multiple levels, implementing
threshold-based functions and dealing with attribute-based naming of queries.

3.3.3 Location-based Protocols

Location information is needed to calculate the distance between two particular nodes so
that energy consumption can be estimated [5]. Location information can substitute global
addressing like IP address which is cannot be implied in wireless sensor networks. By knowing
the position of sensor nodes in the networks, routing protocol can be easily developed. Some
examples of routing protocol that use location information as the attribute are; minimum energy
communication network (MECN) and its extension small MECN (SMECN), and geographic
adaptive fidelity (GAF).

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Minimum Energy Communication Network (MECN)

MECN is proposed in [18]. This protocol is position-based

based algorithm that sets up and
maintains a minimum energy network between nodes. The nodes in the network are randomly
deployed over an area and move at random velocities. The links are dynamically reconfigured as
nodes move around. The beauty of this protocol is that tthe
he network’s operation does not rely on
the number of nodes in the system. Every node in the network is equipped with a low power
Global Positioning Satellite
atellite (GPS) which provides position information of the node. MECN
identifies a relay region for every node. The relay region consists of nodes in a surrounding area
where transmitting through those nodes is more energy-efficient
cient than direct transmission. The
relay region for node pair is notated as (i, r) as depicted in Figure 10.

Figure 10 Relay region of transmit-relay

transmit node pair (i, r)) in MECN.

The enclosure of a node i is then created by taking the union of all relay regions that node
i can reach. Figure 11 depictss the enclosure of node i that is formed by defining all possible relay
region for node i.

21
 Figure 11 Enclosure of node i [18].

The construction of enclosure requires local computations in the nodes and the enclose
graph contains globally optimal links in terms of energy consumption. Since MECN is a self-
reconfiguring protocol, it can dynamically adapt to node’
node’ss failure or the deployment
depl of new
sensors.
An extension to MECN is tthe
he small minimum energy communication network (SMECN)
[19]. The sub-networks
networks constructed in SMECN are provably smaller than that constructed in
MECN. The smaller networks are hope
hoped to consume less energy and have a lower link
maintenance cost. SMECN is also computationally simpler than MECN. SMECN consider
possible obstacles
es between any pair of nodes to assure every node receives transmitted data.
Simulation results show that SMECN uses less energy than MECN and maintenance cost of the
links is less. However, finding
nding a sub-network
sub with smaller number of edges introduces mor
more
overhead in the algorithm.

Geographic Adaptive Fidelity (GAF)

GAF [20] is an energy-aware

energy location-based routing algorithm designed primarily for
mobile ad hoc networks, but may be applicable to sensor networks as well. GAF conserves
energy by turning off unnecessary nodes in the network without affecting
ecting the level of routing
fidelity.
delity. It forms a virtual grid for the covered area. Each node uses its GPS-indicated
GPS location to
associate itself with a point in the vir
virtual
tual grid. Nodes associated with the same point on the grid

22
are considered equivalent in terms of the cost of packet routing. Such equivalence is exploited in
keeping
ing some nodes located in a particular
par grid
id area in sleeping state in order to save energy.
Thus, GAF can substantially increase the network lifetime as the number of nodes increases.
A sample situation is depicted in Figure
Fig 12. In this figure,
gure, node 1 can reach any of 2, 3
and 4 and nodes 2, 3, and
nd 4 can reach 5. Therefore nodes 2, 3 and 4 are equivalent and two of
them can sleep. Nodes change states from sleeping to active in turn so that the load is balanced.
There are three states defined
ned in GAF. These states are discovery, for determining the neighbors
in the grid, active reflecting
ecting participation in routing and sleep when the radio is turned ooff.

Figure 12 An example of virtual grin in GAF [20].

The state transitions

ions in GAF are depicted in Figure 13.. Which node will sleep for how
long is application dependent and the related parameters
eters are tuned accordingly dur
during the routing
process. In order to handle the mobility, each node in the grid estimates its leaving time of grid
and sends this to its neighbors. The sleeping neighbors adjust their sleeping time accordingly in
order to keep the routing fidelity.
delity. Before the leaving time of the active node expires, sleeping
nodes wake up and one of them becomes active.

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 Figure 13 State transition in GAF [20].

GAF is implemented for both non-mobility (GAF-basic) and mobility (GAF-mobility

(GAF
adaptation) of nodes. GAF strives to keep the network
network connected by keeping a representative
node always in active mode for each region on its virtual grid. Simulation results show that GAF
performs at least as well as a normal ad hoc routing protocol in terms of latency and packet loss
and increases the lifetime
ifetime of the network by saving energy. Although GAF is a location-based
location
protocol, it may also be considered as a hierar
hierarchical
chical protocol, where the clusters are based on
geographic location.

4.0 Conclusion and immediate future plan

WSNs have numerous

us applications
applica ranging from indoor event monitoring applications
such as in machine surveillance and preventive maintenance to outdoor event detection such as
in habitat monitoring. To cater such applications, WSNs must be easy to deploy, self-organizing
self
and the most
st importantly is to be energy-efficient.
efficient. A lot of researches have been pursued to
fulfill the requirements of WSNs. This literature intends to examine open research issues in
WSNs especially in the data-link
link layer and network layer of the protocol stack.
stack

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 One of the interesting issues to pursue is routing protocol in sensor networks which takes
role in the network layer. From this literature study, the mechanism used in routing protocol has
evolved from classical flooding and gossiping to energy-aware and self-organizing protocol such
as LEACH and MECN. Every proposed mechanism has their advantages and drawbacks in terms
of energy efficiency and computational issues. However, more review need to be conducted in
order to reach the state-of-art of WSNs protocols and algorithm. There are lots more new
proposed mechanisms of routing protocols to be examines; such as bio-inspiration routing
techniques which adapt the nature into sensor network topology and protocol in order to reach
the requirements of WSNs .

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