chapter 1 INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW 1.1 Introduction Wireless sensor networks have been applied to many applicationssince emerging.

Among them, one of the most important applications is sensor data collection, where sensed data are continuously collected at allo r s o m e o f t h e s e n s o r n o d e s a n d f o r w a r d e d t h r o u g h w i r e l e s s communications to a central base station for further processing. In a WSN,e a c h s e n s o r n o d e i s p o w e r e d b y a b a t t e r y a n d u s e s w i r e l e s s communications. This results in t h e s m a l l s i z e o f a s e n s o r n o d e a n d makes it easy to be attached at any location with little disturbances to thes u r r o u n d i n g e n v i r o n m e n t . S u c h f l e x i b i l i t y g r e a t l y e a s e s t h e c o s t s a n d e f f o r t s f o r d e p l o ym e n t a n d m a i n t e n a n c e a n d m a k e s w i r e l e s s s e n s o r network a competitive approach for sensor data collection comparing withi t s w i r e d c o u n t e r p a r t . I n f a c t , a w i d e r a n g e o f r e a l - w o r l d d e p l o ym e n t s have be witnessed in the past few years. 1.2 Comparison between Wireless and Wired Sensor Networks In a Wireless Sensor Network the lifetime of a sensor node is constrained by the battery attached on it, and the network lifetime in turn depends on the lifetime of sensor n o d e s w h e r e a s t h e s e shortcomings are of least importance in Wired Sensor Networks.Furthermore Wireless Sensor Networks are compact in size, f l e x i b l e a n d c a n b e e a s i l y deployed. Low cost and Maintenance is an added advantage of the Wireless compared to theWired Sensor Networks. There is no collision between the message packets in Wired Sensor Networks. In fact, a wide range of real-world deployments have be witnessed in the past fewyears. Examples are across wildlife habitat monitoring, environmental research, volcanomonitoring , water monitoring, civil engineering and wildland fire forecast/detection are thefew application where Wired Sensor Networks can be seldom used

1.3 Wireless Sensor Networks WSN has many special features comparing with traditional networks such a s I n t e r n e t , wireless mesh network and wireless mobile ad-hoc network. In a WSN, each sensor node is powered by a battery and uses wireless communications. This results in the small size of asensor node and makes it easy to be attached at any location with little disturbances to thesurrounding environment. Such flexibility greatly eases the costs and efforts for deploymentand maintenance and makes wireless sensor network a competitive approach for sensor datacollection. In a WSN design, the network lifetime depends on the lifetime of sensor nodes,t h u s t o f u r t h e r r e d u c e t h e c o s t s o f m a i n t e n a n c e a n d r e d e p l o ym e n t , t h e c o n s i d e r a t i o n o f energy efficiency is often preferred. Although a sensor node is expected to work through along time, it is often not required to work all the time, i.e., it senses ambient environment, processes and transmits the collected data; it then idles for a while until the next

sensing processing-transmitting cycle. To support fault tolerance, a location is often covered byseveral sensor nodes. To avoid duplicate sensing, while one node is performing the sensing p r o c e s s i n g - t r a n s m i t t i n g c yc l e , o t h e r n o d e s a r e k e p t i n t h e i d l e s t a t e . I n t h e s e c a s e s , t h e energy consumption can be further reduced by letting the idle nodes turn to dormant state,where most of the components (e.g., the wireless radio, sensi ng component and processingunit) in a sensor node are turned off (instead of keeping in operation as in the idle state).When the next cycle comes (indicated by some mechanism such as an internal timer), thesec o m p o n e n t s a r e t h e n w a k e n u p b a c k t o t h e n o r m a l ( active ) state again. A low duty-cycleWSN clearly enjoys a much longer lifetime for operation. Another special feature related toenergy consumption is to control the transmission range of a sensor node. As a result, thet r a n s m i s s i o n r a n g e o f a s e n s o r n o d e i s o f t e n p r e f e r r e d t o b e a d j u s t a b l e a n d m a y b e dynamically adjusted to achieve better performance and lower energy consumption. 1.3 Sensor Data collection In a sensor data collection application, sensors are often deployed at the locations specified by the application requirement to collect sensing data. The collected sensing data are thenforwarded back to a central base station for further processing. Traditionally, these sensors

are connected by wires which are used for data transmission and power supply. However, thewired approach is found to need great efforts for deployment and maintenance. To avoidd i s t u r b i n g t h e a m b i e n t e n v i r o n m e n t , t h e d e p l o ym e n t o f t h e w i r e s h a s t o b e c a r e f u l l y designed. And a breakdown in any wire may cause the whole network out of service andenormous time and efforts may be taken to find out and replace the broken line. In addition,the sensing environment itself may make the wired deployment and its maintenance verydifficult, if not impossible. For example, the environment nears a volcano or a wildfire scene,w h e r e t h e h o t g a s e s a n d s t e a m s c a n d a m a g e a w i r e e a s i l y. I n d e e d , e v e n i n a l e s s h a r s h environment like wild habitat or a building, the threats from rodents are still criti cal andmake the protection of wires much more difficult than that of sensors. All these issues makew i r e l e s s s e n s o r network a pleasant choice as it emerges with technology advances. I n addition, unlike other WSNs, the sensors used in sensor data collection a re often in greatamount and of different types, from traditional thermometer, hygrometer to very specializedaccelerometer and strain sensor. These sensors work at their own sample rates specified bythe applications, and the rates may be different from one to another, e.g. a typical samplingrate of an accelerometer is 100 Hz , while the frequency to sample temperature is much lower.Such difference in turn leads to different transmission rates to relay data from different typeo f s e n s o r s , w h i c h m a y f u r t h e r a g g r a v a t e t h e u n b a l a n c e o f t h e t r a f f i c p a t t e r n a n d e n e r g y consumption and thus result in performance inefficiencies

Chapter 2 SENSOR DATA COLLECTION In practice, using WSNs for sensor data collection can be broken into three major stages,namely,a ) t h e D e p l o y m e n t s t a g e , b ) t h e C o n t r o l m e s s a g e dissemination stage andc ) t h e D a t a d e l i v e r y stagea n d e a c h s t a g e h a s i t s o w n i s s u e s a n d f o c u s e s . Fig. 1 shown below illustrates the threestages. The deployment stage addresses the issues such as how to deploy the network in thesensing field. Based on the application requirement, the problem can be further categorizedinto the area-coverage deployment and the location-coverage deployment, where the former requires each location within the sensing field must be covered by some sensor nodes and thel a t t e r r e q u i r e s t h e s e n s o r n o d e s m u s t b e a t t a c h e d t o s o m e l o c a t i o n s specified b y t h e applications. In the control message dissemination stage, network setup/management and/or collection command messages are disseminated from the base station to all sensor nodes,where the challenges lie in how to disseminate messages to all the sensor nodes with smallt r a n s m i s s i o n c o s t s a n d l o w l a t e n c i e s . F l o o d i n g a n d g o s s i p i n g a r e t w o c o m m o n l y u s e d dissemination approaches that can be easily adopted in WSNs. Thus although their basicforms are known inefficient, later works have enhanced them with improved efficiency whileretaining their robustness in the presence of error-prone wireless transmissions. The datadelivery stage fulfills the main task of sensor data collection. Based on the informationindicated by stage 2, sensed data are gathered at different sensor nodes and delivered to the base station, where different QoS requirements from the applications will infer differentapproach designs with different main QoS considerations. It is worth noting that stage 2 andstage 3 may serve alternatively, so that after one round data collection, new setup/commandmessages are disseminated and thus start a new round of collection. In the following sections,we will investigate these stages one by one in detail on their recent progresses and discuss potential directions for the future work.

Networked WSN A Seminar Report 2010-2011The different stages involved in using Wireless Sensor Networks for Sensor Data Collectionare discussed in the upcoming chapters Chapter 3

DEPLOYMENT STRATEGIES The first step for designing a WSN is to consider how it is d e p l o y e d i n t h e s e n s i n g environment. Based on different application requirement, different deployment strategies may be applied. For sensor data collection, one typical requirement is area-coverage , whereeach location within the sensing field must be covered by at least k ( k 1) sensor nodes, andthe main purpose of k> 1 is for fault tolerance. Yet another kind of typical requirement is location-coverage , where sensor nodes must be attached to some specific locations that are chosen carefully by applications. In the following, we will investigate different deployment problems and the resulting solutions, which were proposed to achieve different requirements. A. Deployment for Area-Coverage For area coverage requirement, where each location within the sensing field must be covered by at least k ( k 1) sensor nodes, one solution is using random deployment, which is widelya d o p t e d i n o t h e r WSN applications such as target tracking. An advantage of r a n d o m d e p l o ym e n t i s t h a t s e n s o r n o d e s c a n b e d e p l o ye d b y s p r a yi n g f r o m a i r p l a n e s o r s i m p l y scattering with moderate human efforts. Yet, an issue here is that how many sensor nodes arerequired so as to achieve the k -coverage requirement. Even with connectivity considered atthe initial stage, as time goes on, some sensor nodes may consume more energy than othersdue to more traffic relaying. This leads to unbalanced energy costs and the network being partitioned prematurely with a great number of nodes still having a large amount of energy.To alleviate this problem, the authors of have proposed to deploy additional relay nodes so asto take the burden of traffic relaying from sensor nodes and prolong the lifetime of the wholen e t w o r k . I n a d d i t i o n , they proposed a hybrid approach to deploy relay nod es w h i l e considering theconnectivity and network lifetime simultaneously. Specifically, the sensingfield is divided into three parts based on the distance from the base station. The inner part isthe part closest to the base station, where relay nodes can reach the base station by one hopcommunication. The outer part is the part farthest to the base station, where no traffic from other relay nodes needs to be relayed and the relay nodes only relay traffic directly from theTelecommunication Dept, DSI6

Networked WSN A Seminar Report 2010-2011s e n s o r n o d e s . T h e m e d i u m p a r t i s t h e p a r t r e m a i n i n g b e t w e e n t h e i n n e r a n d o u t e r p a r t s , where relay nodes need to relay traffics from both the sensor nodes and the relay nodes onehop farther from the base station. Different relay node density is then derived for each of thethree parts. B. Deployment for Location-Coverage Another typical coverage requirement for sensor data collection is that sensors are manuallyattached to some specified locations that are carefully chosen by applications. One examplei s t h e p r o j e c t c o n d u c t e d o n T s i n g M a B r i d g e i n H o n g K o n g [ 2 3 ] , w h e r e t h e b r i d g e i s equipped with a large number of accelerometers, thermometers and strain sensors to monitor its working conditions. Another recent project, which is still ongoing, is on the Guangzhou New TV Tower [24] in Guangzhou, China, where the tower will be attached with similar sensors for realtime monitoring and analyzing. In these systems, sensors are deployed at specified locations to fulfill the civil engineering requirements. Since the locations selected b y applications are not necessarily considering the networking requirements s u c h a s connectivity and energy efficiency, additional relay nodes are often placed in the sensingfield to match these requirements and facilitate sensing data deliveries from sensor nodes tothe base station. Yet an issue is how many relay nodes are require d and where to deploythem.R e c e n t l y , i t i s n o t i c e d t h a t f o r s e n s o r d a t a c o l l e c t i o n a p p l i c a t i o n s , o n l y c o n s i d e r i n g connectivity for relay node deployment may not always lead to the best performance in termso f t h e e n e r g y efficiency and network lifetime. For ex ample, in Figures below, b y connectivity-based deployment (Fig. 3a), which is traffic oblivious, the optimal solution tomaximize the network lifetime is to evenly distribute relay nodes along the minimum steiner tree topology. However, given the sensing dat a traffic from each sensor node to the basestation, a better solution that considers such traffic patterns and moves some relay nodesfrom the low traffic edge to the high one (Fig. 3b) can further extend the network lifetimewith more efficient energy utilization

Networked WSN A Seminar Report 2010-2011 An example of relay node deployment: (3a) connectivity-based Deployment(3b) traffic-aware deployment s 1, s 2 are sources with data rate of 0 . 6 and 0 . 3. s 0 is the base station. Given N

relay nodes, by scheme (3a)which only considers connectivity, nodes relaying the traffic from v to s 0 will die much earlier than thoserelaying from s 1 and s 2 to v , while by strategically deploying more nodes ( N ) on section ( v, s 0) (from less busy section ( s 2 ,v )), the network lifetime is prolonged We can see that for the deployment of area -coverage, both random and manual deployingapproaches can be used, and the research trend starts from focusing on coverage only, thenmoves to combining coverage and connectivity together, and now is considering coverageand connectivity jointly with traffic -awareness. For the deployment of location-average,since sensor nodes must be placed at the specified locations precisely, the manual deployingapproach becomes the only choice. Nevertheless, a similar pattern of the research trend canstill be observed. Another interesting issue is fault-tolerance, which has been consideredindividually either for coverage requirement or for connectivity requirement. Howeve r, in practice, both sensor and relay nodes are prone to failure due to the battery limitation and h a s h environment, and failing to fulfill either coverage requirement or c o n n e c t i v i t y requirement may lead to a premature termination of the network lifetime. Thus an importantdirection is to consider fault-tolerance jointly across all such requirements. In addition, howto integrate fault-tolerance with traffic-aware deployment is also an open question

Networked WSN A Seminar Report 2010-2011 Chapter 4 DATA DELIVERY APPROACHES G i v e n t h e d e p l o ym e n t s t r a t e g y o f a W S N , t h e n e x t s t e p i s t o c o n s i d e r t h e d a t a d e l i v e r y approach, i.e., how to forward sensing data from each sensor node to the base station. Due tothe many-to-one feature of the sensor data collection applications, the network topology isoften considered as a tree topology rooted at the base station, which needs to be predefinedo r d yn a m i c a l l y f o r m e d s o t h a t d a t a p a c k e t s c a n b e r o u t e d a l o n g . O n

the other hand, theexistence of wireless interferences and collisions m a k e s t h e s c h e d u l i n g o f d a t a p a c k e t transmissions a challenging problem that needs to be carefully addressed to achieve effectiveand efficient accesses to the wireless medium. To this end, a cross-layer design is ofteninvolved, where the MAC, network and transport layer are considered together to achievemultiple goals such as energy efficiency as well as reliability. Fig. 4.1 illustrates a generic architecture for data delivery approaches. To collect data from sensor nodes, two mandatoryc o m p o n e n t s a r e topology maintenance and transmission scheduler. The t o p o l o g y maintenance component constructs a connected topology and maintains the connectivityd u r i n g n e t w o r k d yn a m i c s a n d l i n k q u a l i t y v a r i a t i o n s . T h e t r a n s m i s s i o n s c h e d u l e r t h e n schedules packet transmissions based on the information from other components so as to reduce collisions and energy wastes. Given different QoS requirements such as throughput,latency and reliability, different optional components may be added. Yet a more challengingissue is that sensor nodes are operating autonomously, thus the transmission schedulingalgorithm needs to be designed to work in a distributed manner. In the following subsections,we will discuss recently proposed approaches by the categorization based on their major QoSconsiderations