Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks: A wireless sensor network is a collection of nodes organized into a cooperative network. Each node consists of processing capability (one or more microcontrollers, CPUs or DSP chips), May contain multiple types of memory (program, data and flash memories), Have a RF transceiver (usually with a single omni-directional antenna), Have a power source (e.g., batteries and solar cells), and accommodate various sensors and actuators. The nodes communicate wirelessly and often self-organize after being deployed in an ad hoc fashion.

Currently, wireless sensor networks are beginning to be deployed at an accelerated pace. It is not unreasonable to expect that in 10-15 years that the world will be covered with wireless sensor networks with access to them via the Internet. This new technology is exciting with unlimited potential for numerous application areas including Environmental, medical, military, transportation, entertainment, crisis management, homeland defense, and smart spaces. Since a wireless sensor network is a distributed realtime system.

Todays Discussion: MAC layer Routing Node localization Clock synchronization Power management

MAC
A medium access control (MAC) protocol coordinates actions over a shared channel. The most commonly used solutions are contentionbased. Node which has a message to transmit to test the channel to see if it is busy, if not busy then it transmits, else if busy it waits and tries again later. If two or more nodes transmit at the same time there is a collision and all the nodes colliding try again later. Many wireless MAC protocols also have a doze mode where nodes not involved with sending or receiving a packet in a given timeframe go into sleep mode to save energy. In general, most MAC protocols optimize for the

 However, a wireless sensor network has more focused requirements that include a local uni-or broad-cast, traffic is generally from nodes to one or a few sinks (most traffic is then in one direction) An effective MAC protocol for wireless sensor networks must consume little power, avoid collisions, Be implemented with a small code size and memory requirements, be efficient for a single application, and be tolerant to changing radio frequency and networking conditions. B-MAC

B-MAC
B-MAC is highly configurable and can be implemented with a small code and memory size. It has an interface that allows choosing various functionality and only that functionality as needed by a particular application B-MAC Consists of 4 main Parts: Clear channel assessment (CCA), Packet backoff, Link layer acks, Low power listening.

For CCA, B-MAC uses a weighted moving average of samples when the channel is idle in order to assess the background noise and better be able to detect valid packets and collisions. The packet backoff time is configurable and is chosen from a linear range as opposed to an exponential backoff scheme typically used in other distributed systems. This reduces delay and works because of the typical communication patterns found in a wireless sensor network.

Contents
Basic Concepts S-MAC T-MAC B-MAC P-MAC Z-MAC

Basic Concepts
Problem TDMA

CSMA RTS / CTS

Hidden Nodes

MAC Challenges
Traditionally
Fairness Latency Throughput

For Sensor Networks

Power efficiency Scalability

S-MAC - Sensor MAC

Nodes periodically sleep Trades energy efficiency for lower throughput and higher latency Sleep during other nodes transmissions
Listen Sleep Listen Sleep t

S-MAC
Listen significantly longer than clock drift Neighboring nodes exchange SYNC msgs Exchanged timestamps are relative rather than absolute RTS/CTS avoids hidden terminal Message passing provided Packets contain expected duration of message Every packet must be acknowledged Adaptive listening can be used so that potential next hop nodes wake up in time for possible transmissions

S-MAC Results

Latency and throughput are problems, but adaptive listening improves it significantly

S-MAC Results

Energy savings significant compared to non-sleeping protocols

T-MAC - Timeout MAC

Transmit all messages in bursts of variable length and sleep between bursts RTS / CTS / ACK Scheme Synchronization similar to S-MAC

T-MAC Operation

T-MAC Results

T-MAC saves energy compared to S-MAC The early sleeping problem limits the maximum throughput Further testing on real sensors needed

B-MAC - Berkeley MAC

B-MACs Goals:
Low power operation Effective collision avoidance Simple implementation (small code) Efficient at both low and high data rates Reconfigurable by upper layers Tolerant to changes on the network Scalable to large number of nodes

B-MACs Features
Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) Low Power Listening (LPL) using preamble sampling Hidden terminal and multi-packet mechanisms not provided, should be implemented, if needed, by higher layers
Sender Sleep Preamble Message t Receiver Sleep Sleep Receive t

B-MAC Interface
CCA on/off Acknowledgements on/off Initial and congestion backoff in a per packet basis Configurable check interval and preamble length

B-MAC Lifetime Model

E can be calculated if hardware constants, sample rate, number of neighboring nodes and check time/preamble are known Better: E can be minimized by varying check time/preamble if constants, sample rate and neighboring nodes are known

B-MAC Results
Performs better than the other studied protocols in most cases System model can be complicated for application and routing protocol developers Protocol widely used because has good results even with default parameters

P-MAC - Pattern MAC

Patterns are 0*1 strings with size 1-N Every node starts with 1 as pattern Number of 0s grow exponentially up to a threshold and then linearly up to N-1 TR = CW + RTS + CTS + DATA + ACK N = tradeoff between latency and energy

Patterns vs Schedules
Local Pattern Bit 1 1 1 0 0 0 Packet to Send 1 1 0 1 1 0 Receiver Pattern Bit 1 0 * 1 0 * Local Schedule 1 111 0 0

P-MAC Evaluation
Simulated results are better than SMAC Good for relatively stable traffic conditions Adaptation to changes on traffic might be slow Loose time synchronization required Needs more testing and comparison with other protocols besides S-MAC

Z-MAC - Zebra MAC

Runs on top of B-MAC Combines TDMA and CSMA features CSMA Pros
Simple Scalable

TDMA Pros

Naturally avoids collisions

Cons
Collisions due to hidden terminals RTS/CTS is overhead

Cons
Complexity of scheduling Synchronization needed

Z-MAC Initialization
Neighborhood discovery through ping messages containing known neighbors Two-hop neighborhood used as input for a scheduling algorithm (DRAND) Running time and message complexity of DRAND is O(), where is the two-hop neighborhood size The idea is to compensate the initialization energy consumption during the protocol normal operation

Z-MAC Time Slot Assignment

Z-MAC Transmission Control

The Transmission Rule: If owner of slot
Take a random backoff within To Run CCA and, if channel is clear, transmit

Else
Wait for To Take a random backoff within [To,Tno] Run CCA and, if channel is clear, transmit

Z-MAC HCL Mode

Nodes can be in High Contention Level (HCL) A node is in HCL only if it recently received an Explicit Contention Notification (ECN) from a two-hop neighbor Nodes in HCL are not allowed to contend for the channel on their two-hop neighbors time slots A node decides to send an ECN if it is losing too many messages (application ACKs) or based on noise measured through CCA

Z-MAC Receiving Schedule

B-MAC based Time slots should be large enough for contention, CCA and one B-MAC packet transmission Slot size choice, like in B-MAC, left to application

Z-MAC Results

Z-MAC performs better than B-MAC when load is high As expected, fairness increases with ZMAC Complexity of the protocol can be a problem

Conclusions
Between the protocols studied, BMAC still seems to be the best one for applications in general Application developers seem not to use B-MACs control interface Middleware service could make such optimizations according to network status