Module 3.

2
 Unit I 8Hrs
Sensor Network Concept: Introduction, Networked wireless sensor devices, Advantages of Sensor
networks, Applications, Key design challenges.
Network deployment: Structured versus randomized deployment, Network topology, Connectivity,
Connectivity using power control, Coverage metrics, Mobile deployment.
 Unit II 8Hrs
Localization and Tracking: Issues and approaches, Problem formulations: Sensing model,
collaborative localization. Coarse-grained and Fine-grained node localization. Tracking multiple
objects: State space decomposition.
Synchronization: Issues and Traditional approaches, Fine-grained clock synchronization, and
Coarse-grained data synchronization.
 Unit III 14Hrs
Wireless Communications: Link quality, shadowing and fading effects
Medium-access and sleep scheduling: Traditional MAC protocols, Energy efficiency in MAC
protocols, Asynchronous sleep techniques, Sleep-scheduled techniques, and Contention-free
protocols.
Routing: Metric-based approaches, Multi-path routing, Lifetime-maximizing energy-aware routing
techniques, Geographic routing. Sensor network Databases: Data-centric routing, Data-gathering
with compression, Querying, Data-centric storage and retrieval, the database perspective on sensor
networks.
Security: Privacy issues, Attacks and countermeasures.
The techniques developed in this section of module is based on the
following assumptions about the sensor network:

 Wireless communication between nodes utilizes radio links; each node

talks directly only to its immediate neighbors within radio range.
Within this range, communication is by broadcast: all immediate
neighbors hear what a node transmits.

 We assume that network deployment is ad hoc, so that node layout

need not follow any particular geometry or topology; irregular
connectivity has to be addressed.

 We assume that nodes know their geographic position.

The techniques developed in this section of module is based on the following assumptions
about the sensor network:

 Nodes operate unattended and have limited power resources. Directly or indirectly, this
limits and shapes all aspects of the node architecture, including the node’s processing,
sensing, and communication subsystems. For communication, the main consideration is
that communication paths consisting of many short hops may be more energy efficient
than paths using a few long hops. Also, since idling the radio costs almost as much
power as transmitting or receiving, algorithms are needed that keep as many nodes in
sleep mode as possible. A separate paging radio channel is sometimes advantageous, in
order to avoid periodic wake-ups.

 Most lightweight sensor nodes have limited or no mobility. This makes sensor networks
somewhat different from their ad hoc mobile network. If mobility is to be added, a
substantially larger form-factor is needed, leading to issues akin to those addressed in
distributed robotics when swarms of robots need to be controlled. Even with no
mobility, sensor nodes can sleep, or fail because of power drainage or other reasons; link
connectivity as well can come and go as environmental conditions vary. Thus dynamic
topology changes have to be considered.
 Media Access Control (MAC) is a sub layer of the data link layer, at least
to the extent that sensor networks may generate different MAC
requirements from ad hoc wireless networks
 The MAC sublayer manages access to the physical network medium,
and its fundamental goal is to reduce or avoid packet collisions in the
medium.
 Several characteristics of wireless sensor networks point to the need
for a specialized MAC protocol:

 Sensor networks are collaborative systems, usually serving one or a

small number of applications. Thus issues of fairness at the node level
are much less important than overall application performance (unlike,
say, on the Internet).
 In many sensor network applications, most sensor nodes are idle
much of the time. When events of interest occur and are detected,
there is likely to be a flood of activity in only some parts of the
network, possibly far from where that information is needed. Because
of this irregular and periodic nature of the processing, applications
must already be prepared to deal with rather large latency times. At
the same time, collaboration among nodes sensing the same
phenomenon can be facilitated by localized node scheduling for
medium access.
 Several characteristics of wireless sensor networks point to the need
for a specialized MAC protocol:

 In-network processing can greatly improve bandwidth utilization.

 The assumed lack of mobility and therefore the relatively fixed

neighborhood of each node can be exploited in medium access
protocol design.

 As mentioned earlier, issues of energy efficiency, scalability, and

robustness remain paramount. We are typically willing to
compromise on many standard protocol objectives (such as fairness or
latency) for the sake of prolonging network lifetime.
 Sensor networks contain many nodes, typically dispersed at high,
possibly non-uniform, densities; sensors may turn on and off in order
to conserve energy; and, the communication traffic is space and time
correlated.
 Contention occurs when two nearby sensor nodes both attempt to
access the communication channel at the same time.
 Contention causes message collisions, which are very likely to occur
when traffic is frequent and correlated, and they decrease the lifetime
of a sensor network.
 A Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specifies how nodes share
the channel, and hence plays a central role in the performance of a
sensor network.
 We have to major categories of MAC protocols:
1. contention-free protocol
2. contention-based protocol
 A MAC protocol is contention-free if it does not allow any collisions.
 All existing contention-free MAC protocols assume that the sensor
nodes are time-synchronized in some way. This is usually not possible
on account of the large scale of sensor networks.
 A contention-free MAC protocol should be able to bring the network
from an arbitrary state to a collision-free stable state.
 A protocol that allows multiple users to share the same spectrum by
defining the events that must occur when two or more transmitters
attempt to simultaneously access the same channel and establishing
rules by which a transmitter provides reasonable opportunities for
other transmitters to operate.
 Such a protocol may consist of procedures for initiating new
transmissions, procedures for determining the state of the channel
(available or unavailable), and procedures for managing
retransmissions in the event of a busy channel.
 The simplest forms of medium-access are unslotted Aloha and slotted
Aloha.

 In unslotted/pure Aloha, each node behaves independently and

simply transmits a packet whenever it arrives; if a collision occurs, the
packet is retransmitted after a random waiting period.

 The slotted version of Aloha works in a similar manner, but allows

transmissions only in specified synchronized slots.
 Another classic MAC protocol is the carrier sense medium-access (CSMA)
protocol.
 In CSMA, a node that wishes to transmit first listens to the channel to assess
whether it is clear.
 If the channel is idle, the node proceeds to transmit.
 If the channel is busy, the node waits a random back-off period and tries again.
 Carrier sense means that a transmitter uses feedback from a receiver to
determine whether another transmission is in progress before initiating a
transmission.
 That is, it tries to detect the presence of a carrier wave from another station
before attempting to transmit. If a carrier is sensed, the station waits for the
transmission in progress to finish before initiating its own transmission.
 In other words, CSMA is based on the principle "sense before transmit" or
"listen before talk".
 CSMA with collision detection is the basic technique used in IEEE
802.3/Ethernet.
 CSMA/CD is used to improve CSMA
performance by terminating transmission
as soon as a collision is detected, thus
shortening the time required before a retry
can be attempted.
 It is particularly important for wireless
networks, where the collision detection of
the alternative CSMA/CD is unreliable due
to the hidden node problem.
 Traditional CSMA fails to avoid collisions
and is inefficient in wireless networks
because of two unique problems:
 the hidden node problem and
 the exposed node problems.
 A sends to B, C cannot receive A
 C wants to send to B, C senses a “free” medium (CS fails)
 collision at B, A cannot receive the collision (CD fails)
 A is “hidden” for C
 B sends to A, C wants to send to another terminal D
 C senses carrier, finds medium in use and has to wait
 A is outside the radio range of C, therefore waiting is not
necessary
 C is “exposed” to B
 These problems are duals of each other in a sense: in the hidden node
problem packets collide because sending nodes do not know of
another ongoing transmission, whereas in the exposed node problem
there is a wasted opportunity to send a packet because of misleading
knowledge of a non-interfering transmission.
 The key underlying mismatch is that it is not the transmitter that
needs to sense the carrier, but the receiver.
 Some communication between the transmitter and receiver is needed
to solve these problems.
 Multiple Access Collision Avoidance (MACA)
 The MACA protocol overcomes the hidden- and exposed-terminal
problems.
 MACA uses two short signalling packets.
 The key idea of the MACA scheme is that any neighboring node that
overhears an RTS packet has to defer its own transmissions until
some time after the associated CTS packet would have finished, and
that any node overhearing a CTS packet would defer for the length
of the expected data transmission.
 Multiple Access Collision Avoidance (MACA)
 However, the RTS–CTS approach does not always solve the hidden-
terminal problem completely, and collisions can occur when
different nodes send the RTS and the CTS packets
 Another weakness of MACA is that it does not provide any
acknowledgment of data transmissions at the data-link layer.
 IEEE 802.11 MAC Scheme
 The IEEE 802.11 standard specifies two modes of MAC protocol:
Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) mode (for ad hoc networks) and
Point Coordination Function (PCF) mode (for centrally coordinated
infrastructure-based networks).
 The DCF in IEEE 802.11 is based on CSMA with Collision Avoidance
(CSMA/CA) protocol, which can be seen as a combination of the CSMA and
MACA schemes.
 The protocol uses the RTS–CTS–DATA–ACK sequence for data transmission.
 A sender first checks to see if it should suppress transmission and back off
because the medium is busy;
 If the medium is not busy, it waits a period DIFS (distributed inter-frame
spacing) before transmitting.
 The receiver of the message sends an ACK upon successful reception after a
period SIFS (short inter-frame spacing).
 IEEE 802.11 MAC Scheme
 The Nodes which overhear RTS/CTS messages record the duration of the
entire corresponding DATA-ACK exchange in their NAV (network allocation
vector) and defer access during this duration.
 An exponential backoff is used
a) when the medium is sensed busy,
b) after each retransmission (in case an ACK is not received), and
c) after a successful transmission.
 IEEE 802.11 MAC Scheme
 In the second mechanism, Point Coordination Function (PCF), a
central access point coordinates medium access by polling the other
nodes for data periodically.
 It is particularly useful for real-time applications because it can be
used to guarantee worst-case delay bounds.
 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
 The IEEE 802.15.4 standard is designed for use in low-rate wireless
personal area networks (LR-WPAN), including embedded sensing
applications .
 Most of its unique features are for a beacon-enabled mode in a star
topology.
 In the beacon-enabled mode for the star topology, the IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
uses a super frame structure shown in Figure .
 IEEE 802.15.4 MAC
 A super frame is defined by a periodic beacon signal sent by the PAN
coordinator.
 Within the super frame there is an active phase for communication
between nodes and the PAN coordinator and an inactive phase, which can
be adjusted depending on the sleep duty cycle desired.
 The active period has 16 slots that consist of three parts:
 The beacon, a contention access period (CAP), and a collision-free period
(CFP) that allows for the allocation of guaranteed time slots (GTS).
 The presence of the collision-free period allows for reservation-based
scheduled access.
 Nodes which communicate only on guaranteed time slots can remain
asleep and need only wake-up just before their assigned GTS slots.
 The communication during CAP is a simple CSMA-CA algorithm, which
allows for a small backoff period to reduce idle listening energy
consumption.
 Energy efficiency is obtained in MAC
protocols essentially by turning off the
radio to sleep mode whenever possible, to
save on radio power consumption.
 There exist power management options in the
infrastructure mode for 802.11.
 Nodes inform the access point (AP) when they
wish to enter sleep mode so that any messages
for them can be buffered at the AP.
 The nodes periodically wake-up to check for
these buffered messages.
 Energy savings are thus provided at the
expense of lower throughput and higher
latency.
 The PAMAS (power aware multi-access protocol with signalling) is an
extension of the MACA technique, where the RTS/CTS signalling is
carried out on a separate radio channel from the data exchange.
 It is one of the first power aware MAC protocols proposed for multi-
hop wireless networks.
 In PAMAS, nodes turn off the radio (go to sleep) whenever they can
neither receive nor transmit successfully.
 Specifically they go to sleep whenever they overhear a neighbor
transmitting to another node, or if they determine through the control
channel RTS/CTS signaling that one of their neighbors is receiving.
 The duration of the sleep mode is set to the length of the ongoing
transmissions indicated by the control signals received on the
secondary channel.
 If a transmission is started while a node is in sleep mode, upon wake-
up the node sends probe signals to determine the duration of the
ongoing transmission and how long it can go back to sleep.
 In PAMAS, a node will only be put to sleep when it is withdrawn from
transmitting/receiving anyway, so that the delay/throughput
performances of the network are not affected badly.

Drawback
 However, there can still be considerable energy wastage in the idle
reception mode (i.e. the condition when a node has no packets to send
and there is no activity on the channel).
 While PAMAS provides ways to save energy on overhearing,
further energy savings are possible by reducing idle receptions.
 The key challenge is to allow receivers to sleep a majority of the
time, while still ensuring that a node is awake and receiving
when a packet intended for it is being transmitted.
 Based on the methods to solve this problem, there are
essentially two classes of contention based sensor network MAC
protocols.
 The first approach is completely asynchronous and relies
exclusively on the use of an additional radio or periodic low-
power listening techniques to ensure that the receiver is woken
up for an incoming transmission intended for it.
 The second approach, with many variants, uses periodic duty-
cycled sleep schedules for nodes.
 Most often the schedules are coordinated in such a way that
transmitters know in advance when their intended receiver will
be awake.
 In these techniques nodes normally keep
their radios in sleep mode as a default,
waking up briefly only to check for traffic or
to send/receive messages.
 Nodes need to be able to sleep to save energy when they do not have
any communication activity and be awake to participate in any
necessary communications.
 The first solution is a hardware one – equipping each sensor node
with two radios.
 In such a hardware design, the primary radio is the main data radio,
which remains asleep by default.
 The secondary radio is a low-power wake-up radio that remains on
at all times.
 If the wake-up radio of a node receives a wake-up signal from another
node, it responds by waking up the primary radio to begin receiving.
 This ensures that the primary radio is active only when the node has
data to send or receive.
 The underlying assumption motivating such a design is that, since the
wake-up radio need not do much sophisticated signal processing, it
can be designed to be extremely low power.
 In this technique, referred to as preamble sampling or low-power
listening, the receivers periodically wake-up to sense the channel.
 If no activity is found, they go back to sleep.
 If a node wishes to transmit, it sends a preamble signal prior to
packet transmission.
 Upon detecting such a preamble, the receiving node will change to a
fully active receive mode.
 The technique is illustrated in Figure
 The wake-up signal could potentially be sent over a high-level packet
interface;
 However, a more efficient approach is to implement this directly in the
physical layer – thus the wake-up signal may be no more than a long
RF pulse.
 The detecting node then only checks for the radio energy on the
channel to determine whether the signal is present.

Drawback
 We should note that this scheme will also potentially wake-up all
possible receivers in a given transmitter’s neighborhood, though
mechanisms such as information in the header can be used to put
them back to sleep if the communication is not intended for them.
 WiseMAC is based on the preamble sampling technique. This
technique consists in regularly sampling the medium to check for
activity.
 By sampling the medium, we mean listening to the radio channel for a
short duration, e.g. the duration of a modulation symbol.
 All sensor nodes in a network sample the medium with the same
constant period TW.
 Their relative sampling schedule offsets are independent and constant.
 If the medium is found busy, a sensor node continues to listen until a
data frame is received or until the medium becomes idle again.
 At the access point, a wake-up preamble of size equal to the sampling
period is transmitted in front of every data frame to ensure that the
receiver will be awake when the data portion of the packet arrives.
 This technique provides a very low power consumption when the
channel is idle.

Disadvantage

 The disadvantages of this technique are that the (long) wake-up

preambles cause a throughput limitation and a large power
consumption overhead in reception.
 The overhead in reception is not only born by the intended
destination, but also by all other nodes overhearing the transmission.
 The novel idea introduced by WiseMAC consists in letting the access point
learn the sampling schedule of all sensor nodes.
 Knowing the sampling schedule of the destination, the access point starts the
transmission just at the right time with a wake-up preamble of minimized
duration TP as illustrated in figure. The access point keeps an up-to-date table
with the sampling schedule of all sensor nodes.
 The sampling schedule information is gained through the inclusion in every
acknowledgement packet (ack) of the remaining time until the next scheduled
sampling.
 The duration of the wake-up preamble must be computed such as to
compensate for the drift between the clock at the access point and on the
sensor nodes.
 This drift is proportional to the time since the last re-synchronization (i.e. the
last time an acknowledgement was received from a given sensor node).
 Let Θ be the frequency tolerance of the time base quartz and l the interval
between two communications.
 The required duration of the wake-up preamble is
 Similar in spirit to lower-power listening/preamble sampling are the
TICER/ RICER techniques
 In the transmitter-initiated cycle receiver technique (TICER) (see
Figure), as in low-power listening, the receiver node wakes up
periodically to monitor the channel for signals from the sender (which
is a wake-up request to send (RTS) signal).
 The sender sends a sequence of such RTS signals followed by a short
time when it monitors the channel.
 When the receiver detects an RTS, it responds right away with a CTS
signal.
 If the sender detects a CTS signal in response to its RTS, it begins
transmission of the packet.
 Thus the key difference from preamble sampling is that in TICER the
sender sends a sequence of interrupted signals instead of a single long
preamble, and waits for an explicit signal from the receiver before
transmitting.
 In the receiver-initiated cycle receiver technique (RICER), illustrated in
Figure , a receiving node periodically wakes up to execute a three
phase monitor–send wake-up beacon–monitor sequence.
 A source that wishes to transmit wakes up and stays in a monitoring
state.
 When it hears a wake-up beacon from a receiver, it begins
transmission of the data.
 The receiver in a monitor state that sees the start of a data packet
remains on until the packet reception is completed.
 A nice implementation of this class of low-power MAC protocols is the
highly reconfigurable and light-weight B-MAC protocol.
 The core of B-MAC consists of the following features which can be
turned on/off and used in any combination desired:
 Low-power listening (LPL), which implements the preamble-based
wake-up technique described above, to permit nodes to have sleep as
the default mode, helping to conserve energy. Different channel
sampling durations and preamble durations can be selected by the
higher layers.
 Clear channel assessment (CCA), which determines whether the
channel is busy or not by examining multiple adjacent samples and
using an appropriate outlier detection technique. If CCA is disabled, a
scheduling protocol may be implemented above B-MAC. If it is
enabled, the back-off duration (in case a busy channel is detected) may
be selected by the higher layer. CCA is used for low-power listening.
 Acknowledgements (ACK): If acknowledgements are enabled, a
response is sent immediately after receiving any unicast packet.
 Channel reservation signals for RTS/CTS can be implemented above
B-MAC using its control interfaces, but are not part of the core B-MAC
itself.