MODULE 1

Sensor Network Concept

 SYLLABUS
• 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.
 Wireless Sensor Network
“A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a wireless
network consisting of spatially distributed
autonomous devices using sensors to
cooperatively monitor physical or
environmental conditions, such as
temperature, sound, vibration, pressure,
motion or pollutants, at different locations.”
- Wikipedia
 Introduction
• sensor
– A transducer
– converts physical phenomenon e.g. heat, light, motion, vibration,
and sound into electrical signals
• sensor node
– basic unit in sensor network
– contains on-board sensors, processor, memory, transceiver, and
power supply
• sensor network
– consists of a large number of sensor nodes
– nodes deployed either inside or very close to the sensed
phenomenon

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 Sensor Nodes
Worldsens Inc. Sensor Node Crossbow Sensor Node

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Sensor Node Components

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 Mote /sensor node

Analog I/O Ports

Sensor
Radio Transceiver
D/A

A/D
Microcontroller

Digital I/O ports

Sensor
External Memory

• A very low cost low power computer

• Monitors one or more sensors
• A Radio Link to the outside world
• Are the building blocks of Wireless Sensor
Networks (WSN)
 Sensor Node Components
• Sensing Unit
• Processing Unit
• Transceiver Unit
• Power Unit
• Location Finding System (optional)
• Power Generator (optional)
• Mobilizer (optional)

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WSN Communication Architecture

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NETWORKED WIRELESS SENSOR DEVICES
 Low-power embedded processor
• computational tasks on a WSN device
• processing of both locally sensed information as
well as information communicated by other
sensors.
• research and development have only an eight-bit
16-MHz processor
• embedded operating systems, such as TinyOS.
• WSN devices may possess extremely powerful
embedded processors
• efficient sleep modes and dynamic voltage scaling
to provide significant energy savings.
 Memory/storage:
• Storage in the form of random access and read-only
memory includes both program memory (from
which instructions are executed by the processor),
and data memory (for storing raw and processed
sensor measurements and other local information).
• quantities of memory and storage on board a WSN
device are often limited primarily by economic
considerations, and are also likely to improve over
time.
 Radio transceiver
• include a low-rate, short-range wireless radio (10–
100 kbps, <100 m).
• NEEDED improvements in cost, spectral efficiency,
tunability, and immunity to noise, fading, and
interference.
• the radio must incorporate energy-efficient sleep
and wake-up modes.
 Sensors:
• Due to bandwidth and power constraints, WSN
devices primarily support only low-data-rate
sensing.
• each device may have several sensors on board.
• sensors used are highly dependent on the
application
• include temperature sensors, light sensors,
humidity sensors, pressure sensors, accelerometers,
magnetometers, chemical sensors, acoustic sensors,
or even low-resolution imagers.
 Geo positioning system
• it is important for all sensor measurements to
be location stamped.
• Obtain positioning is to pre-configure sensor
locations at deployment, but this may only be
feasible in limited deployments.
• network is deployed in an ad hoc manner,
such information is most easily obtained via
satellite-based GPS.
 Power source
• For flexible deployment the WSN device is
likely to be battery powered (e.g. using LiMH
AA batteries).
• the finite battery energy is likely to be the
most critical resource bottleneck in most WSN
applications.
Applications of wireless sensor networks

• 1. Ecological habitat monitoring

• 2. Military surveillance and target tracking
• 3. Structural and seismic monitoring
• 4. Industrial and commercial networked
sensing
 Ecological habitat monitoring
• ecological habitats (animals, plants, micro-
organisms) are traditionally conducted through
hands-on field activities by the investigators.
• wireless sensor networks promise a cleaner,remote-
observer approach to habitat monitoring.
 Military surveillance and target tracking
• wireless sensor networks originated primarily in
military-related research.
• They can be rapidly deployed for surveillance and
used to provide battlefield intelligence regarding
the location, numbers, movement, and identity of
troops and vehicles, and for detection of chemical,
biological, and nuclear weapons.
• many of the leading US researchers and
entrepreneurs in the area of wireless sensor
networks today have been and are being funded by
these DARPA programs.
 Structural and seismic monitoring
• monitoring the condition of civil structures
• health of such structures is monitored primarily
through manual and visual inspections or
occasionally through expensive and time-
consuming technologies, such as X-rays and
ultrasound.
• information about incipient cracks or about other
structural damage
• involves the development of controllable structures
 Industrial and commercial networked sensing
• industrial manufacturing facilities, sensors and
actuators are used for process monitoring and
control.
• placed at different points in the process in order to
monitor the temperature, chemical concentration,
pressure, etc.
• there are already several companies developing and
marketing these products, and there is a clear
ongoing drive to develop related technology
standards, such as the IEEE 802.15.4 standard
 Wireless Sensor Networks Applications
Military Applications
• Monitoring friendly forces, equipment, and ammunition
• Battlefield surveillance
• Reconnaissance of opposing forces and terrain
• Targeting
• Battle damage assessment
• Nuclear, biological, and chemical attack detection
Environmental Applications
• Forest fire detection
• Bio-complexity mapping of environment
• Flood detection
• Precision Agriculture
• Air and water pollution

Health Applications
• Telemonitoring of human physiological data
• Tracking and monitoring doctors and patients inside a hospital
• Drug administration in hospitals 22
 Wireless Sensor Networks Applications
Home and Office Applications
• Home and office automation
• Smart environment
Automotive Applications
• Reduces wiring effects
• Measurements in chambers and rotating parts
• Remote technical inspections
• Conditions monitoring e.g. at a bearing

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 Wireless Sensor Networks Applications

Other Commercial Applications

• Environmental control in office buildings (estimated
energy savings $55 billion per year!)
• Interactive museums
• Detecting and monitoring car thefts
• Managing inventory control
• Vehicle tracking and detection

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Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks ref.
Georgia Institute of Technology

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Key design challenges
• Extended lifetime: As mentioned above, WSN
nodes will generally be severely energy
constrained due to the limitations of batteries.
• Responsiveness: A simple solution to extending
network lifetime is to operate the nodes in a duty-
cycled manner with periodic switching between
sleep and wake-up modes.
• Synergy: Moore’s law-type advances in technology
have ensured that device capabilities in terms of
processing power, memory, storage, radio
transceiver performance, and even accuracy of
sensing improve rapidly (given a fixed cost).
• Scalability: For many envisioned applications, the
combination of fine granularity sensing and large
coverage area implies that wireless sensor networks
have the potential to be extremely large scale (tens
of thousands, perhaps even millions of nodes in the
long term).
• Heterogeneity: There will be a heterogeneity of
device capabilities (with respect to computation,
communication, and sensing) in realistic settings.
• Self-configuration: Because of their scale and the
nature of their applications, wireless sensor
networks are inherently unattended distributed
systems.
• Self-optimization and adaptation: Traditionally,
most engineering systems are optimized a priori to
operate efficiently in the face of expected or well
modeled operating conditions.
• Systematic design: As we shall see, wireless sensor
networks can often be highly application specific.
• Privacy and security: The large scale, prevalence,
and sensitivity of the information collected by
wireless sensor networks (as well as their potential
deployment in hostile locations) give rise to the
final key challenge of ensuring both privacy and
security.
 Network deployment
• Deployment Issues
•Structured versus Randomized Deployment
•Over deployed versus Incremental Deployment
•Connectivity and Coverage Metrics of Interest
 Structured versus randomized deployment
• randomized deployment approach is appealing for
futuristic applications of a large scale, where nodes are
dropped from aircraft or mixed into concrete before
being embedded in a smart structure.
• Randomized sensor deployment can be even more
challenging in some respects, since there is no way to
configure a priori the exact location of each device.
• Additional post-deployment self-configuration
mechanisms are therefore required to obtain the
desired coverage and connectivity.
• In case of a uniform random deployment, the only
parameters that can be controlled a priori are the
numbers of nodes and some related settings on these
nodes, such as their transmission range.
Structured placement
Many small–medium-scale WSNs are likely to be
deployed in a structured manner via careful hand
placement of network nodes. In both cases, the cost
and availability of equipment will often be a
significant constraint.
Possible methodology for structured placement :
• Place sink/gateway device at a location that provides the desired
wired network and power connectivity.
• Place sensor nodes in a prioritized manner at locations of the
operational area where sensor measurements are needed.
• If necessary, add additional nodes to provide requisite network
connectivity.
 Network topology
• Regardless of whether the deployment is
randomized or structured, the connectivity
properties of the network topology can be
further adjusted after deployment by varying
transmit powers.
• The communication network can be configured
into several different topologies
• Single-hop star
• The simplest WSN topology is the single-hop star
shown in Figure (a). Every node in this topology
communicates its measurements directly to the
gateway.
• Wherever feasible, this approach can significantly
simplify design, as the networking concerns are
reduced to a minimum.
• However, the limitation of this topology is its poor
scalability and robustness properties. For instance,
in larger areas, nodes that are distant from the
gateway will have poor-quality wireless links.
• Multi-hop mesh and grid
• For larger areas and networks, multi-hop
routing is necessary.
• Depending on how they are placed, the nodes
could form an arbitrary mesh graph as in
Figure (b)or they could form a more
structured communication graph such as the
2D grid structure shown in Figure (c).
• Two-tier hierarchical cluster
• Perhaps the most compelling architecture for WSN
is a deployment architecture where multiple nodes
within each local region report to different cluster
heads .There are a number of ways in which such a
hierarchical architecture may be implemented.
• This approach becomes particularly attractive in
heterogeneous settings when the cluster-head
nodes are more powerful in terms of
computation/communication
• Within each cluster there could be either
single-hop or multi-hop communication.
• Once data reach a cluster-head they would
then be routed through the second-tier
network formed by cluster-heads to another
cluster-head or a gateway.
 Connectivity in geometric random graphs
• The connectivity (and coverage) properties of
random deployments can be best analyzed using
Random Graph Theory.
• There are several models of random graphs that
have been studied in the literature.
• A random graph model is essentially a systematic
description of some random experiment that can be
used to generate graph instances.
• These models usually contain a tuning parameter
that varies the average density of the constructed
random graph.
• The Bernoulli random graphs, G(n,p) studied in
traditional Random Graph Theory are formed by
taking n vertices and placing random edges
between each pair of vertices independently with
probability p.
• A random graph model that more closely represents
wireless multi-hop networks is the geometric
random graph
• In a geometric G(n,R) randomgraph, n nodes are
placed at random with uniform distribution in a
square area of unit size (more generally, a
d-dimensional cube). There is an edge (u,v)
between any pair of nodes u and v, if the Euclidean
distance between them is less than R.
• Figure illustrates G(n,R)for n=40 at two different R values.
When R is small, each node can connect only to other
nodes that are close by, and the resulting graph is sparse;
on the other hand, a large R allows longer links and results
in a dense connectivity.
 Connectivity in G(n, R)
• Figure shows how the probability of network connectivity varies as
the radius parameter R of a geometric random graph is varied.
Depending on the number of nodes n, there exist different critical
radii beyond which the graph is connected with high probability.
These transitions become sharper (shifting to lower radii) as the
number of nodes increases.
• Figure shows the probability that the network is connected with
respect to the total number of nodes for different values of fixed
transmission range in a fixed area for all nodes. It can be observed
that, depending on the transmission range, there is some number of
nodes beyond which there is a high probability that the network
obtained is connected.
 Monotone properties in G(n, R)
• A monotonically increasing property is any graph property
that continues to hold if additional edges are added to a
graph that already has the property. A graph property is
called monotone if the property or its inverse are
monotonically increasing.
• Nearly all graph properties of interest from a networking
perspective, such as K-connectivity, Hamiltonicity,
K-colorability, etc., are monotone.
• all monotone properties are satisfied with high probability
within a critical transmission range that is
Connectivity in G(n, K)
 Connectivity and coverage in Ggrid(n, p, R)
• In this model n nodes are placed on a square grid
within a unit area, p is the probability that a node is
active (not failed), and R is the transmission range
of each node. For this unreliable sensor grid model,
the following properties have been determined:
 Connectivity using power control
• Adjust the connectivity properties of the deployed
network
• This parameter is the radio transmission power
setting for all nodes in the network.
• Power control is quite a complex and challenging
cross-layer issue
• Increasing radio transmission power has a number
of interrelated consequences –some of these are
positive, others negative:
• It can extend the communication range, increasing
the number of communicating neighboring nodes
and improving connectivity in the form of
availability of end-to-end paths.
• For existing neighbors, it can improve link quality
(in the absence of other interfering traffic).
• It can induce additional interference that reduces
capacity and introduces congestion.
• It can cause an increase in the energy expended.
• Most of the literature on power-based topology
control has been developed for general ad hoc
wireless networks, but these results are very much
central to the configuration of WSN.
 some key results and proposed techniques here.
• providing minimum energy paths may require some
nodes in the network to have high transmission
powers, potentially limiting network lifetime due to
partitions caused by rapid battery depletion of
these nodes
• under more dynamic conditions this may not be an
issue, as load balancing may be provided through
activation of different nodes at different times.
 Minimum energy connected network construction (MECN)
• A graph topology is defined to be a minimum power
topology.
• if for any pair of nodes there exists a path in the graph that
consumes the least energy compared with any other
possible path. The construction of such a topology is the
goal of the MECN (minimum energy communication
network) algorithm.
• Each node’s enclosure is defined as the region around it.
• energy-efficient to transmit directly without relaying only
for the neighboring nodes.
• The MECN topology control algorithm first constructs the
enclosure graph in a distributed manner, then prunes it
using a link energy cost-based Bellman–Ford algorithm to
determine the minimum power topology.
• Let C(u, v) be the energy cost for a direct
transmission between nodes u and v in the MECN-
generated topology. It is possible that there exists
another route r between these very nodes, such
that the total cost of routing on that path
C(r)<C(u,v); in this case the edge (u,v) is redundant.
• The small minimum energy communication network
(SMECN) distributed protocol, while still
suboptimal, provides a provably smaller topology
with the minimum power property compared to
MECN
• The advantage of such a topology with a smaller
number of edges is primarily a reduced cost for link
maintenance.
 Minimum common power setting (COMPOW)

• The COMPOW protocol ensures that the lowest

common power level that ensures maximum
network connectivity is selected by all nodes. A
number of arguments can be made in favor of using
a common power level that is as low as possible
(while still providing maximum connectivity) at all
nodes:
• (i) it makes the received signal power on all links
symmetric in either direction
• (ii) it can provide for an asymptotic network
capacity which is quite close to the best capacity
achievable without common power levels;
• (iii) a low common power level provides low-power
routes; and
• (iv) a low power level minimizes contention.
• The COMPOW protocol works as follows: first
multiple shortest path algorithms (e.g. the
distributed Bellman–Ford algorithm) are performed,
one at each possible power level.
• Each node then examines the routing tables
generated by the algorithm and picks the lowest
power level such that the number of reachable
nodes is the same as the number of nodes
reachable with the maximum power level
• some possible drawbacks. First, it is not very
scalable, as each node must maintain a state that is
of the order of the number of nodes in the entire
network.
 Minimizing maximum power
• A work by Ramanathan and Rosales-Hain presents
exact (centralized) as well as heuristic (distributed)
algorithms that seek to generate a connected
topology with non-uniform power levels, such that
the maximum power level among all nodes in the
network is minimized.
• They also present algorithms to ensure a
biconnected topology, while minimizing the
maximum power level.
• This approach is best suited for the situation where
all nodes have the same initial energy level, as it
tries to minimize the energy burden on the most
loaded device.
 Cone-based topology control (CBTC)
• The cone-based topology control (CBTC) technique
provides a minimal direction-based distributed rule
to ensure that the whole network topology is
connected, while keeping the power usage of each
node as small as possible.

• In CBTC each node keeps increasing its transmit

power until it has at least one neighboring node in
every α•cone angle or it reaches its maximum
transmission power limit.
On the left we see an intermediate power level for a node at
which there exists an •cone in which the node does not have a
neighbor. Therefore, as seen on the right, the node must
increase its power until at least one neighbor is present in
every •
.
Local minimum spanning tree construction (LMST)
• To construct a consistent global spanning tree topology in
a completely distributed manner
• This scheme first runs a local minimum spanning tree
(LMST) construction for the portion of the graph that is
within visible (max power) range.
• The local graph is modified with suitable weights to ensure
uniqueness, so that all nodes in the network effectively
construct consistent LMSTs such that the resultant network
topology is connected.
• The technique ensures that the resulting degree of any
node is bounded by 6, and has the property that the
topology generated can be pruned to contain only
bidirectional links.
• Simulations have suggested that the technique can
outperform both CBTC and MECN in terms of average node
degree
 Coverage metrics
• Connectivity metrics are generally application
independent.
• the choice of coverage metric is much more
diverse and depends highly upon the application.
• two qualitatively different sets of coverage
metrics that have been considered in several
studies: one is the set of K-coverage metrics that
measure the degree of sensor coverage overlap;
the other is the set of path-observability metrics
that are suitable for applications involving
tracking of moving objects.
 K-coverage
• This metric is applicable in contexts where there is
some notion of a region being covered by each
individual sensor.
• A field is said to be K-covered if every point in the
field is within the overlapping coverage region of at
least K sensors.
• Definition 1
• Consider an operating region A with n sensor
nodes, with each node i providing coverage to a
node region Ai ϵ A (the node regions can overlap).
The region A is said to be K-covered if every point
p ϵ A is also in at least K node regions.
• the way to determine that an area is K- covered is to
divide the area into a grid of very fine granularity
and examine all grid points through exhaustive
search to see if they are all K-covered.
• In an s × s unit area, with a grid of resolution ϵ unit
distance, there will be s2 / ϵ such points to examine,
which can be computationally intensive.
• A slightly more sophisticated approach would
attempt to enumerate all sub regions resulting from
the intersection of different sensor node-regions
and verify if each of these is K-covered.
• Definition 2
• A sensor is said to be K-perimeter-covered if all
points on the perimeter circle of its region are
within the perimeters of at least K other sensors.
• Theorem 3
• The entire region is K-covered if and only if all n
sensors are k-perimeter-covered.
• Theorem 4
• The entire region is K-covered if and only if all
intersection points between the perimeters of the n
sensors (and between the perimeter of sensors and
the region boundary) are covered by at least K
sensors.
• Theorem 5
• If a convex region A is K-covered by n sensors with
sensing range Rs and communication range Rc, their
communication graph is a K-connected network
graph so long as Rc >= 2Rs.
 Path observation
• example of such a metric is the maximal breach
distance metric
• Consider for instance a WSN deployed in a
rectangular operational field that a target can
traverse from left to right.
• The maximal breach path is the path that maximizes
the distance between the moving target and the
nearest sensor during the target’s point of nearest
approach to any sensor.
• Intuitively, this metric aims to capture a worst-case
notion of coverage, “Given a deployment, how well
can an adversary with full knowledge of the
deployment avoid observation?”
• Given a sensor field, and a set of nodes on it, the
maximal breach path is calculated in the following
manner:
1. Calculate the Voronoi tessellation of the field with
respect to the deployed nodes, and treat it as a
graph.
• A Voronoi tessellation separates the field into
separate cells, one for each node, such that all
points within each cell are closer to that node than
to any other.
• While the maximal breach path is not unique, it can
be shown that at least one maximal breach path
must follow Voronoi edges, because they provide
points of maximal distance from a set of nodes.
2. Label each Voronoi edge with a cost that represents
the minimum distance from any node in the field to
that edge.
3. Add a starting (ending) node to the graph to represent
the left (right) side of the field, and connect it to all
vertices corresponding to intersections between
Voronoi edges and the left (right) edge of the field.
Label these edges with zero cost.
4. Using a dynamic programming algorithm, determine
the path between the starting and ending nodes of the
graph that maximizes the lowest-cost edge traversed.
This is the maximal breach path. The label of the
lowest-cost edge is the maximal breach distance.
 Voronoi tessellation

• In mathematics, a Voronoi diagram is a partitioning of

a plane into regions based on distance to points in a
specific subset of the plane. That set of points (called
seeds, sites, or generators) is specified beforehand, and
for each seed there is a corresponding region consisting
of all points closer to that seed than to any other. These
regions are called Voronoi cells..
• An illustration of the maximal breach path can be seen
in Figure. Note that there can be several maximal
breach paths with the same distance.
• algorithm can be used to evaluate different possible
deployments to determine which one provides the best
coverage.
• Unlike the maximal breach distance, which tries to
determine the worst case observability of a traversal by
a moving object, the maximal support distance aims to
provide a best-case coverage metric for moving objects.
• The maximal support path is the one where the moving
node can stay as close as possible to sensor nodes
during its traversal of the covered area
• Using the Delaunay triangulation, which connects
all nodes in the planar field through line segments
that tessellate the field into a set of triangles.
• Since Delaunay edge represent the shortest way to
traverse between any pair of nodes, it can be shown
that at least one maximal support path traverses
only through Delaunay edges
• A graph search or dynamic programming algorithm
can then be used to find the path through the
Delaunay graph (extended to include a start and
end node as before) on which the maximum edge
cost is minimized.
 Other metrics
• Coverage requirements and metrics can vary a lot
from application to application. Some other metrics
of interest may be the following:
• Percentage of desired points covered: given a set of
desired points in the region where sensor
measurements need to be taken, determine the
fraction of these within range of the sensors.
• Area of K-coverage: the total area covered by at
least K sensors.
• Average coverage overlap: the average number of
sensors covering each point in a given region.
• Maximum/average inter-node distance: coverage
can also be measured in terms of the maximum or
average distance between any pair of nodes.
• Minimum/average probability of detection: given a
model of how placement of nodes affects the
chances of detecting a target at different locations,
the minimum or average of this probability in the
area.
 Mobile deployment
• approach to ensuring non-overlapping coverage
with mobile nodes is the use of potential field
techniques,where by the nodes spread out in an
area by using virtual repulsive forces to push away
from each other .This technique has the great
advantage of being completely distributed and
localized, and hence easily scales to very large
numbers.
• A similar technique is the distributed self-spreading
algorithm (DSSA)
• An incremental self-deployment algorithm is
described in, whereby a new location for placement
is calculated at each step based on the current
deployment
• the nodes are sequentially shifted so that a new
deployment is created with a node moving into that
new location and other nodes moving one by one
accordingly to fill any gaps.
• after an initial deployment of the static nodes,
coverage holes are determined and the mobile
nodes move to fill these holes based on bids placed
by static nodes