Literature Of Wireless Sensor Networks Research Articles

A Fuzzy Cooperative Localisation Framework for Underwater Robotic Swarms.

This article proposes a holistic localisation framework for underwater robotic swarms to dynamically fuse multiple position estimates of an autonomous underwater vehicle while using fuzzy decision support system. A number of underwater localisation methods have been proposed in the literature for wireless sensor networks. The proposed navigation framework harnesses the established localisation methods in order to provide navigation aids in the absence of acoustic exteroceptive sensors navigation aid (i.e., ultra-short base line) and it can be extended to accommodate newly developed localisation methods by expanding the fuzzy rule base. Simplicity, flexibility, and scalability are the main three advantages that are inherent in the proposed localisation framework when compared to other traditional and commonly adopted underwater localisation methods, such as the Extended Kalman Filter. A physics-based simulation platform that considers environment’s hydrodynamics, industrial grade inertial measurement unit, and underwater acoustic communications characteristics is implemented in order to validate the proposed localisation framework on a swarm size of 150 autonomous underwater vehicles. The proposed fuzzy-based localisation algorithm improves the entire swarm mean localisation error and standard deviation by 16.53% and 35.17%, respectively, when compared to the Extended Kalman Filter based localisation with round-robin scheduling.

Experimental Tools and Techniques for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have earned an upsurging inquisitiveness of the research community over the past decade and for the upcoming era, due to which we can realize its countless applications in various fields including medical, military, environment and academia. Wireless sensor networks composed of thousands or sometimes millions of sensor nodes which are usually operated by batteries that have limited energy, data processing, storage and transmission capacity. Moreover, these sensor nodes are densely deployed in human inaccessible regions and connected through error prone wireless links to offer a long coverage, therefore It is very difficult rather impractical to analyze the behavior of WSNs with real experiments. Most researches in this particular field are carried out by using simulation tools in several educational associations and research hubs. For this reason study of existing experimental tools for analyzing the behavior of WSNs becomes essential. This paper is intended to present a review on experimental tools and techniques available in the literature for WSNs, including simulators, emulators and test beds. These tools are highly useful for analyzing the operational behavior of wireless sensor networks. This paper also provides a roadmap for selecting appropriate experimental tools for various kinds of WSNs and its applications by taking into account their capabilities, relative ease of use and accuracy.

Adaptive Proportional–Integral Clock Synchronization in Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we present a novel control-theoretic time synchronization algorithm, named PISync for synchronizing sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The PISync algorithm is based on an adaptive proportional–integral controller. It applies a proportional feedback (P) and an integral feedback (I) on the local measured synchronization errors to compensate the differences between the clock offsets and the clock speeds. We present practical flooding-based and fully distributed protocol implementations of the PISync algorithm, and we provide theoretical analysis to highlight the benefits of this approach in terms of improved steady-state error and scalability as compared with existing synchronization algorithms. We show through theoretical analysis, real-world experiments, and simulations that PISync protocols have better or comparable performance over existing protocols in the WSN literature in terms of rate of convergence and steady-state error with the additional advantages of requiring minimal CPU overhead, memory allocation, and code footprint independent of network size and topology, and of employing blind communication.

Optimizing Communication and Computation for Multi-UAV Information Gathering Applications

Mobile agent networks, such as multi-UAV systems, are constrained by limited resources. In particular, limited energy affects system performance directly, such as system lifetime. It has been demonstrated in the wireless sensor network literature that the communication energy consumption dominates the computational and the sensing energy consumption. Hence, the lifetime of the multi-UAV systems can be extended significantly by optimizing the amount of communication data, at the expense of increasing computational cost. In this work, we aim at attaining an optimal trade-off between the communication and the computational energy. Specifically, we propose a mixed-integer optimization formulation for a multi-hop hierarchical clustering-based self-organizing UAV network incorporating data aggregation, to obtain an energy-efficient information routing scheme. The proposed framework is tested on two applications, namely target tracking and area mapping. Based on simulation results, our method can significantly save energy compared to a baseline strategy, where there is no data aggregation and clustering scheme.

Optimization Techniques for Design Problems in Selected Areas in WSNs: A Tutorial.

This paper is intended to serve as an overview of, and mostly a tutorial to illustrate, the optimization techniques used in several different key design aspects that have been considered in the literature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). It targets the researchers who are new to the mathematical optimization tool, and wish to apply it to WSN design problems. We hence divide the paper into two main parts. One part is dedicated to introduce optimization theory and an overview on some of its techniques that could be helpful in design problem in WSNs. In the second part, we present a number of design aspects that we came across in the WSN literature in which mathematical optimization methods have been used in the design. For each design aspect, a key paper is selected, and for each we explain the formulation techniques and the solution methods implemented. We also provide in-depth analyses and assessments of the problem formulations, the corresponding solution techniques and experimental procedures in some of these papers. The analyses and assessments, which are provided in the form of comments, are meant to reflect the points that we believe should be taken into account when using optimization as a tool for design purposes.

Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks: Previous Research, Current Status and Future Directions

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of large number of small sized sensor nodes, whose main task is to sense the desired phenomena in a particular region of interest. These networks have large number of applications such as habitat monitoring, disaster management, security and military etc. Sensor nodes are very small in size and have limited processing capability as these nodes have very low battery power. WSNs are also prone to failure, due to low battery power constraint. Data aggregation is an energy efficient technique in WSNs. Due to high node density in sensor networks same data is sensed by many nodes, which results in redundancy. This redundancy can be eliminated by using data aggregation approach while routing packets from source nodes to base station. Researchers still face trouble to select an efficient and appropriate data aggregation technique from the existing literature of WSNs. This research work depicts a broad methodical literature analysis of data aggregation in the area of WSNs in specific. In this survey, standard methodical literature analysis technique is used based on a complete collection of 123 research papers out of large collection of 932 research papers published in 20 foremost workshops, symposiums, conferences and 17 prominent journals. The current status of data aggregation in WSNs is distributed into various categories. Methodical analysis of data aggregation in WSNs is presented which includes techniques, tools, methodology and challenges in data aggregation. The literature covered fifteen types of data aggregation techniques in WSNs. Detailed analysis of this research work will help researchers to find the important characteristics of data aggregation techniques and will also help to select the most suitable technique for data aggregation. Research issues and future research directions have also been suggested in this research literature.

A Survey of Energy Efficient Clustering Algorithms in Wireless Sensor Networks

To make the most of network lifetime in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) the paths for data transfer are chosen in a manner that the total energy utilized along the path is minimized. To support high scalability and better data aggregation, sensor nodes are regularly assembled into disjoint, non overlapping subsets called clusters. Clusters create hierarchical WSNs which incorporate efficient utilization of limited resources of sensor nodes and thus extends network lifetime. The goal of this paper is to show a cutting edge review on clustering algorithms reported in the literature of WSNs. This paper presents various energy efficient clustering algorithms in WSNs.

An Evaluation of Topology Effect on Tiny Service Discovery Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In the literature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), a well studied problem is that of achieving full sevice discovery within a region according to the topology model of coverage. A large waiting time of wireless sensor applications spent in node discovery, as nodes need to periodically advertise their presence and be awake to discover other nodes for services. Uniformly random distributions are widely accepted models for the location of the nodes in WSNs. Depending on the application, it may also be possible to place sensors in a four models of topologies; random, square, tringle and hexagon. There is a rich literature on throughput capacity for WSNs topologies in general, but we want to specifically study Service Discovery Protocol and how proper node deployment scheme can reduce the complexity of problems. In this paper, the effect of node topology on the performance of Tiny Service Discovery Protocol (TinySDP) in WSNs has been analyzed. In order to measure and evaluate the performance of TinySDP within variant shapes of topologies, We compared in terms of success ratio, number of transmitted messages and average waiting time. Simulation results showed that hexagon topology has a high data success ratio and a very low average waiting time, which are major requirements for disaster management scenarios. Â

Concepts And Evolution Of Research In The Field Of Wireless Sensor Networks

The field of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is experiencing a resurgence of interest and a continuous evolution in the scientific and industrial community. The use of this particular type of ad hoc network is becoming increasingly important in many contexts, regardless of geographical position and so, according to a set of possible application. WSNs offer interesting low cost and easily deployable solutions to perform a remote real time monitoring, target tracking and recognition of physical phenomenon. The uses of these sensors organized into a network continue to reveal a set of research questions according to particularities target applications. Despite difficulties introduced by sensor resources constraints, research contributions in this field are growing day by day. In this paper, we present a comprehensive review of most recent literature of WSNs and outline open research issues in this field.

A STATISTICAL APPROACH TOWARDS SECURE LOCATION VERIFICATION IN NOISY WIRELESS CHANNELS

Location verification in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is quite challenging in the presence of malicious sensor nodes, which are called attackers. These attackers try to break the verification protocol by reporting their incorrect locations during the verification stage. In the literature of WSNs, most of the existing methods of location verification use a set of trusted verifiers, which are vulnerable to attacks by malicious nodes. These existing methods also use some distance estimation techniques, which are not accurate in noisy channels. In this article, we adopt a statistical approach for secure location verification to overcome these limitations. Our proposed method does not rely on any trusted entities and it takes care of the limited precision in distance estimation by using a suitable probability model for the noise. The resulting verification scheme detects and filters out all malicious nodes from the network with a very high probability even when it is in a noisy channel.

Survey on the Characterization and Classification of Wireless Sensor Network Applications

Nowadays, wireless sensor network (WSN) users are demanding more and more in terms of choice and diversity of applications. Hence, as the diversity of applications is increasing, it is worthwhile to propose a structure for the set of characterization parameters that allows sketching a taxonomy for WSN applications. This taxonomy is established via an application-oriented approach, identifying the specific services offered by each application. In this survey, we fill this gap in the WSN literature by describing the characterization parameters, organized into six different categories. Our taxonomy for application classification is centered on the different sets of parameters that have high impact on a given future WSN application. Typical attributes and values from related research works are considered as a reference, but in this survey, we propose inter- and intra-connections among the considered application groups. Based on these connections, new application groups have been proposed for applications that share common characterization parameters, along with a holistic overview of WSN application taxonomy and the discussion of the three generations of WSNs toward communication between things and the Internet of Things , as well as future trends for the development of WSN applications. Moreover, detailed parameters from different projects and authors in the field of WSNs are joined together for comparison purposes.

Data Collection About Rare Plant Species by Wireless Sensor Networks through Congestion Aware Routing

Agricultural monitoring is an important application of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) where energy-efficiency and reliability are two essential performance measures. The extended lifetime of a network is of limited use if the acquired reliability does not meet the application requirement. In order to improve the reliability, it is necessary to reduce congestion because of the inherent correlation between reliability and congestion. Existing Congestion control algorithms, found in WSN literature, are reactive. After formation and detection of congestion, these algorithms try to reduce the congestion. In this paper, we present a congestion aware routing protocol that avoids congestion formation proactively and as a result, it improves data delivery success rate in WSNs deployed to gather agricultural data. Appropriate routes are selected based on location, energy and congestion information of neighbours as well as based on the location information of the base station. Experimental results show that the proposed method is energy-efficient and at the same time, it achieves high packet success.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/pa.v21i1-2.16768 Progress. Agric. 21(1 & 2): 195 - 204, 2010

New Trends in Secure Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks

Recently, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been deployed into a variety of applications including homeland security, military systems, and health care. Sensor nodes deployed in such networks are subject to several attacks such as sinkhole and select forwarding, wormhole, Hello flood, and replication attacks. Therefore, developing secure and energy-efficient routing protocols to protect WSNs against these attacks while efficiently utilizing the energy of the deployed nodes has become imperative. Several routing protocols have been proposed in the literature for WSNs. Most of these protocols assume static nodes and sinks to collect data from network fields. However, they may be highly movable, and recent advances show that mobile sensors in WSNs have a promising performance. Therefore, this paper surveys the state of the art on routing protocols related to WSNs and presents the security issues or problems associated with the current protocols as well as discusses the future trends and open research issues on secure routing protocols of WSNs.

On Energy Efficiency in Collaborative Target Tracking in Wireless Sensor Network: A Review

Energy-efficiency in target tracking applications has been extensively studied in the literature of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). However, there is little work which has been done to survey and summarize this effort. In this paper, we address the lack of these studies by giving an up-to-date State-of-the-Art of the most important energy-efficient target tracking schemes. We propose a novel classification of schemes that are based on the interaction between the communication subsystem and the sensing subsystem on a single sensor node. We are interested in collaborative target tracking instead of single-node tracking. In fact, WSNs are often of a dense nature, and redundant data that can be received from multiple sensors help at improving tracking accuracy and reducing energy consumption by using limited sensing and communication ranges. We show that energy-efficiency in a collaborative WSN-based target tracking scheme can be achieved via two classes of methods: sensing-related methods and communication-related methods. We illustrate both of them with several examples. We show also that these two classes can be related to each other via a prediction algorithm to optimize communication and sensing operations. By self-organizing the WSN in trees and/or clusters, and selecting for activation the most appropriate nodes that handle the tracking task, the tracking algorithm can reduce the energy consumption at the communication and the sensing layers. Thereby, network parameters (sampling rate, wakeup period, cluster size, tree depth, etc.) are adapted to the dynamic of the target (position, velocity, direction, etc.). In addition to this general classification, we discuss also a special classification of some protocols that put specific assumptions on the target nature and/or use a "non-standard" hardware to do sensing. At the end, we conduct a theoretic comparison between all these schemes in terms of objectives and mechanisms. Finally, we give some recommendations that help at designing a WSN-based energy efficient target tracking scheme.

A Survey on Clustering Routing Protocols in Wireless Sensor Networks

The past few years have witnessed increased interest in the potential use of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) in a wide range of applications and it has become a hot research area. Based on network structure, routing protocols in WSNs can be divided into two categories: flat routing and hierarchical or clustering routing. Owing to a variety of advantages, clustering is becoming an active branch of routing technology in WSNs. In this paper, we present a comprehensive and fine grained survey on clustering routing protocols proposed in the literature for WSNs. We outline the advantages and objectives of clustering for WSNs, and develop a novel taxonomy of WSN clustering routing methods based on complete and detailed clustering attributes. In particular, we systematically analyze a few prominent WSN clustering routing protocols and compare these different approaches according to our taxonomy and several significant metrics. Finally, we summarize and conclude the paper with some future directions.

Energy-Constrained Quality Optimization for Secure Image Transmission in Wireless Sensor Networks

Resource allocation for multimedia selective encryption and energy efficient transmission has not been fully investigated in literature for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In this article, we propose a new cross-layer approach to optimize selectively encrypted image transmission quality in WSNs with strict energy constraint. A new selective image encryption approach favorable for unequal error protection (UEP) is proposed, which reduces encryption overhead considerably by controlling the structure of image bitstreams. Also, a novel cross-layer UEP scheme based on cipher-plain-text diversity is studied. In this UEP scheme, resources are unequally and optimally allocated in the encrypted bitstream structure, including data position information and magnitude value information. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed approach can simultaneously achieve improved image quality and assured energy efficiency with secure transmissions over WSNs.

TOPOLOGY CONTROL ALGORITHMS FOR WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS: AN OVERVIEW

The main goal of a topology control scheme in wireless sensor networks is to reduce node power consumption in order to extend network lifetime. In this paper we present an overview of a range of topology control algorithms proposed in literature for wireless sensor networks. The topology control schemes in most of the existing works can be categorized into two classes: Either multi-state or power-control. We believe that most energy savings might come from turning off redundant nodes rather than by minimizing node transmit power. However, both classes of schemes could be combined for further energy savings. Each algorithm is described in depth and compared against each other to capture their uniqueness. The most important design issues of topology control are also highlighted.