Network Embedded Application

Assignment
Name: Vithya M

BITS ID: 2019HT01605

Problem statement
To design building monitoring and fire warning system for the 42 - a residential skyscraper in Kolkata in
the state of West Bengal. In the case of fire, the system should be able to direct occupants in the room
towards a safe exit – by providing them with visual signs on the floor. The IoT System will have to
monitor the status of fire in every part of the building and also continuously monitor the structural
stability of the building (structural stability is usually monitored using strain sensors, vibration sensors,
acoustic emission sensors). The data will be monitored in the base station on the ground floor.

Building plan and floor plan

The overall height of the building is 268 meters and is made up of 62 floors. It has 54 apartments.
Assumptions:

 There are 2 fire exits/ emergency exits as shown by the arrow ( Blue arrow) in 4 Bedroom
residence/5 Bedroom residence.
 There is only 1 fire exit in floors 43-50 ( simplex and upper duplex & simplex and lower duplex )
 The upper and lower floors in upper duplex and lower duplex is accessible only through stairs
within the house and not by the lift so thereby only 1 fire exit in the duplex houses.
 High quality sensors are used which is resistant to heat.
 Battery operated sensors are preferred in order to be able to be placed anywhere without
dependence on power supply.
 Floor cluster head is not prone to damage as its only function is routing of data

Purpose of Building monitoring system

Nowadays, fire detections and building monitoring systems is very important. In large residential areas
like the 42, any fire accident in 1 flat can damage the entire building. So it is important to have robust
fire monitoring system. Early detection of fire can be useful and reduces property and life losses. Proper
evacuation methodologies taking into consideration of parameters like building strength, vibrations, fire
spread etc has been largely possible using WSNs( wireless sensor networks).

Deployment diagram
Fire detection

Sensors are very cheap nowadays, so we can use multiple sensors for critical regions like kitchen , Pooja
room( where there is more probability of fire), near electrical appliances ( more prone to short circuit
and fire ) to have redundancy and robustness. However, making all the sensors redundant can increase
the cost of the system. So the proposal is to have redundancy in critical regions in house.

Total area of the House is 7700 for 4BHK – 7800 sq.ft for other configurations
With 4 bedrooms ; 1 kitchen, 1 living room, 1 study room , 1 family room, Pooja room, store room,
power room, 4 bathroom, lift lobby, utility and 3 balcony.
Apart from this Maid place and corridors.
Assuming, Smoke detection devices with coverage of a 20ft radius. The deployment pattern for fire
/smoke detection device is as shown in the below diagram.
The redundancy in ensured in critical areas like kitchen and large areas. There is also overlap in coverage
areas to ensure there is no false alarms also. This will be discussed in further sections.
Each floor has a central communication head whose only responsibility is routing and transfer of data.
We use clustering topology for the deployment of sensors and communication between sensors .We
use the ZigBee protocol to provide communication between the sensors.
Number of motes : 35 for each house. So for 54 apartments it will come around 54*35 = 1890.
With larger margin we can consider 2000 fire sensors including the common areas and lift.
Mote Characteristics:
Memory : External memory is not needed. Only controller memory is enough for code and network
stack.
Communication: Zigbee protocol - ZigBee is targeted for radio-frequency (RF) applications which
requires a low data rate and long battery life. Here data transfer is less and battery operated. So Zigbee
protocol can be useful.
Computation : controller to facilitate data transfer and LED interface to show the direction on floor.
Power: Battery operated
Sensor: smoke detector sensor (Ionization detector is more beneficial for detecting flaming fires,
Photoelectric detector is more beneficial for detecting non flaming fires)
Building monitoring
Consider the area of the building to be 8000 sq ft. (by taking the area of the house + 20% additional for
common area) and perimeter to be 60*2+90*2 = 300 ft. In the basement for vibration sensor ,
considering coverage for 100 sq.ft ( around 6 ft radius ) there will be 150 sensors needed for vibration
sensors ( considering coverage in blindspot areas like corners).

For monitoring each floor, sensors are placed in each pillar. From the 20 pillars in each floor . For 62
floors the sensors needed will be 1220.

Total sensors for monitoring building strength will be 1220+150 = 1370 (considering extra 1450 sensors )
Motes characteristics

We use star topology communication between sensors in floor and floor head sensor and multi-hop
communication for communication to base station with Zigbee communication.

Memory: External memory is not needed. Only controller memory is enough for code and network
stack.
Communication: Zigbee protocol - ZigBee is targeted for radio-frequency (RF) applications which
requires a low data rate and long battery life. Here data transfer is less and battery operated. So Zigbee
protocol can be useful.
Computation: controller to facilitate data transfer.
Power: Battery operated
Sensor: strain sensors, vibration sensors, acoustic emission sensors
Floor head mote characteristics:
All other characteristics are similar
Power: External power supply
Sensor: No
Function: only event driven data packet forwarding
Zigbee communication range is 50 -100 m where as the apartment height is 268 m , so multi-hop
communication is preferred for transmission of data to base station.
Deployment considerations:

Coverage is limited by the senor coverage rather than the communication and radio frequency range

The sensors follow rather than structured placement. This is because; the sensor coverage range is as
circular area. So to eliminate having blindspots in coverage the deployment pattern is random rather
than structured.

The sensors are over deployed in the critical areas like Pooja room and kitchen, fully over deploying will
increase the cost of the system.

The nodes are heterogeneous as there is nodes for fire detection, strain sensors, vibration sensors and
acoustic emission sensors
Traffic Pattern
 Data: As using clustering topology is used, the data traffic is of convergence cast type
Two scenarios of data transfer is prevalent
1. Periodic and event based data transmission to check for the functioning of the motes.
2. Sending the measured value and the time stamp followed by mote ID in case of emergency
 Control from base station to floor heads is of multicast type.

Network
1. Inter-cluster operation
Every one hour or so time synchronization is initiated by base station. The floor head initiates
broadcast to the cluster head for time synchronization. The floor head also transmits TPSN
identifier packet to next floor.
Event based data incase of emergency is transmitted immediately to base station using multihop
TDMA.
2. Intra-cluster operation
Every one hour or so time synchronization is initiated by base station. During time
synchronization the functioning of the motes is also checked by sending the measured value to
the cluster head. Cluster head validated the measured value based on measurements from
neighbouring motes and timestamp. Data is transmitted only in case of emergency and time
synchronization. In case of emergency, data transfer is using CSMA and during time
synchronization single hop TDMA is used. All the data packet follow fixed routing. Event based
data routed as soon as it is received to the floor head which inturn transfers to the base station
if it is emergency data rather than test data ( checking for functioning during time
synchronization).

Time synchronization protocol

As the clocks in motes are prone to variations in temperature which may cause clock speedup or slow
down, mechanical stress and Vibration, time synchronization is important. In case of emergency, there
should be time stamp needed at the base station for appropriate measures to be taken.

Base station serves as common time source ( universal time source ). All the other sensors alter the
timing according to the base station.

TPSN( time sync protocol for sensor network) between the base station and floor heads.

Base station sends the level discovery frame (containing senders’ identity & level) by flooding. The
power / radio frequency is limited to cover only 1 floor. So all the floor heads will receive
synchronization.
The floorhead, which receives the frame, will assign itself one level above it.

The floorhead, which has assigned a level for itself, forward the level discovery packet. Once the floor
head has sent level discovery to next level, it will initiate reference broadcast synchronization for sync
between cluster heads followed by reference broadcast to the cluster members by respective cluster
head.

Localization scheme
All the motes are stationary, so only self-localization is enough. Each mote is given an ID based on the
floor number followed by cluster ID followed by the mote number. The messages sent are identified
using this number/ ID for the mote.

MAC protocol
TDMA within cluster based on mote ID. Single hop TDMA is used within the cluster. As each sensor has a
cluster head. Similarly single hop TDMA to floor head with cluster ID and mote ID. To the base station
floor head uses multi hop TDMA.

Routing protocol
For information from base station and vice versa Data centric routing directed diffusion is used. During
event based transmission, base station acts as sink, in case of control information the respective floor
head acts as sink. So this method is efficient as the data load is also less only the sensor ID ( cluster
ID,floor ID, mote ID ) is transmitted and signals for safe area is given. As the motes are stationary,
proactive routing is preferred.

Based on information from base station, the corresponding LEDs from the fire sensor is lit therby
providing route to safe exit.

Fault tolerance mechanisms

 Range overlap of the sensors – The sensors are placed in such a manner that the ranges of 2
sensor cover a particular point. This ensures redundancy and coverage if any one of the sensor
fails.
 Periodic monitoring of functioning of sensors by sending the measured values to cluster head
and cluster head in turn checks the validity of the sensed data.
 Fault prevention-Battery level transmitted by each sensors to cluster head when below certain
threshold which inturn communicates to floor head to base station.