Sensor Network Simulator Research Articles

Industrial Monitoring Wireless Sensor Network Routing Algorithm and Simulation

Aiming at the routing protocol in an industrial monitoring system, this paper analyzes the demand of the industrial monitoring wireless routing protocol, proposes a region adaptive routing protocol, and provides the algorithm, procedure and data structure of the route protocol in the industrial monitoring system. Simulation results show that the result of quantitative description compared energy consumption with time delay, this protocol is superior to orientation spreading, sensor protocols for information via negotiation(SPIN) and passing more energy protocols in both aspects, this algorithm can replace the all existing route protocols in the field of industrial monitoring area.

Industrial Monitoring Wireless Sensor Network Routing Algorithm and Simulation

Industrial Monitoring Wireless Sensor Network Routing Algorithm and Simulation

Visualisation of efficiency coverage and energy consumption of sensors in wireless sensor networks using heat map

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of spatially distributed autonomous sensors that cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion and pollutants. WSNs are currently utilised in various and different types of WSN simulators have been developed to visually depict the coverage, energy consumption status and expected lifetime of WSN sensors. In particular, owing to the importance of low energy movement design for efficient energy consumption, devices that can design and verify the efficiency of packets are being developed. Therefore, this study suggests a coverage visualisation technique for a sensor node; this technique is based on an existing binary model that uses the detection rate of nodes portrayed on a heat map. In addition to coverage visualisation, the visualisation technique can be used to predict the energy lifetime of a node. The simulator that can verify visualisation techniques for efficient coverage visualisation and energy lifetime prediction has been designed and implemented. This simulator, which the authors have named current reduction state observer on WSN device (CROWD), performs sensor network simulation using a virtual sensor network and multi-mobile objects. CROWD also shows the detection rate of sensors on a heat map.

무선센서네트워크용 동작레벨 시뮬레이터 설계

Recently, a lots of research proposals and results on mobile sensor network are actively announced. The most of such works are based on general-purposed network simulators such as ns-2, mathlab, etc. But, It is not easy to model and simulate the detail activities of each sensor node, data deliveries between them, and its cost such as power consumption and resource utilization, so that the simulation results of those simulators show the limited aspects of overall networks features or performance metrics. In this paper proposed, power consumption of each node, performance, mobility, and location information in operation-level of the network that can simulate a wireless sensor network simulator platform. Because the network routing algorithm analysis of being developed in an existing becomes available, the proposed simulator can usability in the new network routing algorithm development.

Analysis of LEACH Energy Parameters

The LEACH protocol is a popular protocol used in wireless sensor network analysis and simulation. This paper analyses the effect of varying the parameter values used in the LEACH protocol. In particular, we study the effect of the bit rate and operational frequency on the free space factor, and the effect of the antenna heights on the multipath factor. Simulation results are presented. We show that the parameters normally used apply to a specific network only. Network lifetime results obtained using one set of parameters are not easily generalized

Multiple Targets Tracking Using Kinematics in Wireless Sensor Networks

Target tracking is considered as one of the cardinal applications of a wireless sensor network. Tracking multiple targets is more challenging than tracking a single target in a wireless sensor network due to targets’ movement in different directions, targets’ speed variations and frequent connectivity failures of low powered sensor nodes. If all the low-powered sensor nodes are kept active in tracking multiple targets coming from different directions of the network, there is high probability of network failure due to wastage of power. It would be more realistic if the tracking area can be reduced so that less number of sensor nodes will be active and therefore, the network will consume less energy. Tracking area can be reduced by using the target’s kinematics. There is almost no method to track multiple targets based on targets’ kinematics. In our paper, we propose a distributed tracking method for tracking multiple targets considering targets’ kinematics. We simulate our method by a sensor network simulator OMNeT++ and empirical results state that our proposed methodology outperforms traditional tracking algorithms.

A new three-dimensional wireless multimedia sensor network simulation environment for connected coverage problems

A wireless multimedia sensor network (WMSN) is a network of wirelessly interconnected sensors that can gather multimedia information, such as sound and vision. One of the most important design issues of a WMSN is to maximize the coverage, while preserving the network connectivity. Although there are many studies about coverage for WMSNs, most of them are based on two-dimensional terrain assumptions. However, particularly for outdoor applications, three-dimensional (3-D) terrain structure affects the performance of the WMSN remarkably. In this paper, a novel 3-D WMSN simulation environment for connected coverage issues is presented. There are four main modules of our simulation environment. The terrain generator ( TerGen) generates a synthetic 3-D landscape with different weather conditions (snow, rain, and fog), object occlusions (artificial or natural objects), and toughness levels of terrain (smooth or rough). The scenario editor ( SenEd) is used to define various sensor types that have various behavioral and locational attributes. The outputs of TerGen and SenEd are the inputs of the simulator engine ( SimEn), which simulates the WMSN and gives the performance results. The Optimization Module ( OptMod), which is optional, can be used to determine the location of the sensors optimally, while satisfying a set of predefined constraints. Different scenarios are simulated to show the capabilities of the simulation environment. The performance results show that the 3-D terrain structure affects the coverage performance of the WMSN directly. The object occlusions and weather conditions are also very important for WMSN coverage.

A comparative study on simulation vs. real time deployment in wireless sensor networks

Increasing deployment density and shrinking size of wireless sensor nodes requires small equipped battery size. This means emerging wireless sensor nodes must compete for efficient energy utilization. Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols play a vital role in energy consumption of sensor node as it controls the radio activities. Customized or open source simulators play an important role to measure the performance effectiveness of MAC protocols based on the fact that they are flexible, reduce experimental overhead and cost. Nevertheless, these benefits come at the cost of results accuracy. In this paper, we investigate differences of the behaviour of our agent based S-MAC protocols in real deployment compared to the results produced using our custom based simulator, which ignores the lower layers effects such as packet collision and overhearing. We use network simulator 2 (ns2), an open source simulator, which provides a complete protocol stack. We further try to find and explain the rationale of the variance of results produced by real deployment and that of simulators.

Resilient localization for sensor networks in outdoor environments

The process of determining the physical locations of nodes in a wireless sensor network is known as localization . Self-localization is critical for large-scale sensor networks, because manual or assisted localization is often impractical due to time requirements, economic constraints, or inherent limitations of the deployment scenarios. We propose scalable solutions for reliably localizing wireless sensor networks in environments conducive to several types of ranging errors. We follow a hybrid hardware-software approach for acoustic ranging or radio interferometry to acquire internode distance measurements, and a resilient self-localization algorithm to compute the node location estimates. The acoustic ranging method improves on previous work, extending the practical measurement range up to 35 m in grassy outdoor environments, achieving a distance-invariant median measurement error of about 1% (33 cm). The localization algorithm is based on least-squares scaling with soft constraints. Empirical evaluation using ranging results obtained from sensor network field experiments and simulations confirms that our approach is more resilient than multidimensional scaling (MDS) algorithms against large-magnitude ranging errors and sparse range measurements: conditions that are common in large-scale outdoor sensor network deployments.

An ultra-wideband impulse radio PHY layer model for network simulation

This paper presents a novel modeling technique of Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radio for the simulation of wireless sensor networks, to evaluate this technology from a systems point of view that includes the effect of communication protocols. The adopted approach, named Maximum Pulse Amplitude Estimation, considers the characteristics of the propagation channel, the transmitter and receiver architectures, the modulation type, the robustness to multiple access interference and the impact of error correction coding. It differs from the state of the art by working at the symbol level instead of developing an analytical model. While this technique increases the processing time, it offers more flexibility in terms of modulations, channel models and receiver architecture. Our approach enabled us to implement the first network simulation model of the UWB PHY specified in the IEEE 802.15.4A standard. It is also the first UWB-IR network simulation model to consider an energy detection receiver. Several channel models have been implemented, offering trade-offs between simulation speed and accuracy. The performance of this energy detection transceiver is compared with MATLAB models. The packet error rate is evaluated as a function of distance with several channel models, and in the presence of interferers. It is shown that our approach leads to results in line with MATLAB models, that the choice of channel model greatly impacts the simulation speed and that the IEEE 802.15.4A UWB PHY allows some limited degree of protection against multiple access interference even when using a low performance energy detection receiver architecture.

Hardware and software system-level simulator for wireless sensor networks

Wireless Sensor Network is a large-scale network of resource-constrained (energy, memory and processing) sensor nodes that are deployed at different locations, in order to monitor physical or environmental conditions. A design problem is that a lot of sensor node platforms exist, and many MAC-layer and protocol configurations can be used. It is also difficult to explore design space to check for feasibility at early design stage.Focusing on widely used IEEE 802.15.4 standard, our simulator - called IDEA1- enables designers to check, through an easy to use graphical environment, the possible use of actual and future systems. That SystemC simulator is also composed of a library (that is periodically improved) of electrical devices and software stacks. It permits to find which hardware system to choose and which software to develop to best fit application requirements.

Study on minimum hop routing in wireless sensor networks simulation

In order to improve the general performance of Minimum Hop Routing(MHR) wireless sensor networks,with the help of simulation,this paper revealed the shortcomings of traditional MHR wireless sensor networks,dug out the required information at low expenses to improve the traditional MHR wireless sensor networks,discussed the improving policies,and compared the performances of the networks before and after.The theoretical analysis and simulation results imply that it will improve the data transmission reliability,energy-efficiency and general performance if we revise the traditional MHR wireless sensor networks by the information derived from network behaviors with low cost.

On the multiplexed limit capacity of spectrally overlapped continuous wave fibre Bragg grating sensor networks

An analysis is performed concerning the spectral effects of multiple scattering in optimally designed sensor networks with a continuous wave interrogating light source. A greater understanding of the nature of crosstalk in these systems is established from the theoretical results. Expectation values and optimal configurations are determined from the simulations of sensor networks of various sizes and configurations.

Self-propagating mal-packets in wireless sensor networks: Dynamics and defense implications

Self-propagating mal-packets have become an emergent threat against information confidentiality, integrity, and service availability in wireless sensor networks. While playing an important role for people to interact with surrounding environment, wireless sensor networks suffer from growing security concerns posed by mal-packets because of sensor networks’ low physical security, lack of resilience and robustness of underlying operating systems, and the ever-increasing complexity of deployed applications. In this paper, we study the propagation of mal-packets in 802.15.4 based wireless sensor networks. Based on our proposed mal-packet self-propagation models, we use TOSSIM, a simulator for wireless sensor networks, to study their propagation dynamics. We also present a study of the feasibility of mal-packet defense in sensor networks. Specifically, we apply random graph theory and percolation theory to investigate the immunization of highly-connected nodes, i.e., nodes with high degrees of connectivity. Our goal is to partition the network into as many separate pieces as possible, thus preventing or slowing down the mal-packet propagation. We study the percolation thresholds of different network densities and the effectiveness of immunization in terms of connection ratio, remaining link ratio, and distribution of component sizes. We also present an analysis of the distribution of component sizes.

A Distributed Variational Bayesian Algorithm for Density Estimation in Sensor Networks

In this paper, the problem of density estimation and clustering in sensor networks is considered. It is assumed that measurements of the sensors can be statistically modeled by a common Gaussian mixture model. This paper develops a distributed variational Bayesian algorithm (DVBA) to estimate the parameters of this model. This algorithm produces an estimate of the density of the sensor data without requiring the data to be transmitted to and processed at a central location. Alternatively, DVBA can be viewed as a distributed processing approach for clustering the sensor data into components corresponding to predominant environmental features sensed by the network. The convergence of the proposed DVBA is then investigated. Finally, to verify the performance of DVBA, we perform several simulations of sensor networks. Simulation results are very promising.

A Smooth Gauss-Semi-Markov Mobility Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

Simulation is an indispensable tool in protocol design and evaluation. Typically, simulations of mobile wireless sensor networks rely upon mobility models. This paper presents a smooth Gauss-semi-Markov mobility model (SGM) that can reflect the realistic node movement and has more controllable parameters. Time stationary average speed and uniform spatial node distribution of SGM are proved by Markov process and renewal process theory. Thus, SGM model can be applied to simulation of mobile wireless sensor networks.

Hybrid simulation of Sensor and Actor Networks with BARAKA

We present BARAKA, a new hybrid simulator for Sensor and Actor Networks (SANETs). This tool provides integrated simulation of communication networks and robotic aspects. It allows the complete modelling of co-operation issues in SANETs including the performance evaluation of either robot actions or networking aspects while considering mutual impact. This hybrid simulation enables new potentials in the evaluation of algorithms developed for communication and co-operation in SANETs. Previously, evaluations in this context were accomplished separately. On the one hand, network simulation helps to measure the efficiency of routing or medium access. On the other hand, robot simulators are used to evaluate the physical movements. Using two different simulators might introduce inconsistent results, and might make the transfer on real hardware harder. With the development of methods and techniques for co-operation in SANETs, the need for integrated evaluation environment increased. To compensate this demand, we developed BARAKA.

Distributed EM Algorithm for Gaussian Mixtures in Sensor Networks

This paper presents a distributed expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm over sensor networks. In the E-step of this algorithm, each sensor node independently calculates local sufficient statistics by using local observations. A consensus filter is used to diffuse local sufficient statistics to neighbors and estimate global sufficient statistics in each node. By using this consensus filter, each node can gradually diffuse its local information over the entire network and asymptotically the estimate of global sufficient statistics is obtained. In the M-step of this algorithm, each sensor node uses the estimated global sufficient statistics to update model parameters of the Gaussian mixtures, which can maximize the log-likelihood in the same way as in the standard EM algorithm. Because the consensus filter only requires that each node communicate with its neighbors, the distributed EM algorithm is scalable and robust. It is also shown that the distributed EM algorithm is a stochastic approximation to the standard EM algorithm. Thus, it converges to a local maximum of the log-likelihood. Several simulations of sensor networks are given to verify the proposed algorithm.

Wireless sensor network application programming and simulation system

We present, a wireless sensor network application programming and simulation system, suitable for wireless sensor network application development for both resource constrained and unconstrained hardware. Developed programs can be tested inside simulator, or (with source unchanged) executed directly on hardware. Main contribution of our project is uniform object oriented programming model with predefined basic concurrency abstractions.

Power Aware Simulation Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks and Nodes

The constrained resources of sensor nodes limit analytical techniques and cost-time factors limit test beds to study wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Consequently, simulation becomes an essential tool to evaluate such systems. We present the power aware wireless sensors (PAWiS) simulation framework that supports design and simulation of wireless sensor networks and nodes. The framework emphasizes power consumption capturing and hence the identification of inefficiencies in various hardware and software modules of the systems. These modules include all layers of the communication system, the targeted class of application itself, the power supply and energy management, the central processing unit (CPU), and the sensor-actuator interface. The modular design makes it possible to simulate heterogeneous systems. PAWiS is an OMNeT++ based discrete event simulator written in C++. It captures the node internals (modules) as well as the node surroundings (network, environment) and provides specific features critical to WSNs like capturing power consumption at various levels of granularity, support for mobility, and environmental dynamics as well as the simulation of timing effects. A module library with standardized interfaces and a power analysis tool have been developed to support the design and analysis of simulation models. The performance of the PAWiS simulator is comparable with other simulation environments.