6/25/2021
Introduction to wireless sensor network
Lecture# 15
By: Dr. Shahzad Ashraf
Wireless sensor network
• The type of 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.
• A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of base stations and a number of
wireless sensors (nodes).
• While a sensor is a electronic device that measures a physical quantity and
converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an
instrument.
• Even though wireless sensors has limited resources in memory, computation
power, bandwidth, and energy but due to its small physical size, it can be
embedded in any physical environment.
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Wireless sensor network
Lifetime
• Nodes are battery-powered
• Nobody is going to change the batteries. So, each operation brings the
node closer to death.
"Lifetime is crucial!”
To save energy:
• Sleep as much as possible.
• Acquire data only if indispensable.
• Use data fusion and compression.
• Transmit and receive only if necessary. Receiving is just as costly as
sending.
Maintenance
• Reprogramming is the only practical kind of maintenance.
• It is highly desirable to reprogram wirelessly.
Wireless sensor network
Power Supply
• AA batteries power the vast majority of existing platforms. They
dominate the node size.
• Alkaline batteries offer a high energy density at a cheap price. The
discharge curve is far from flat, though.
• Lithium coin cells are more compact and boast a flat discharge curve.
• Rechargeable batteries: Who does the recharging?
• Solar cells are an option for some applications.
• Fuel cells may be an alternative in the future.
• Energy scavenging techniques are a hot research topic (mechanical,
thermodynamical, electromagnetic).
Radio
• Commercially-available chips
• Available bands: 433 and 916MHz, 2.4GHz ISM bands
• Typical transmit power: 0dBm.
Power control
• Sensitivity: as low as -110dBm
• Narrowband (FSK) or Spread Spectrum communication. DS-SS (e.g., ZigBee) or FH-SS
(e.g., Bluetooth)
• Relatively low rates (<100 kbps) save power.
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Wireless sensor network
The components of wireless sensor node
Wireless sensor network
General work process of WSN
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Types of sensor Applications of sensor
• Thermal • Military
• Electromagnetic • Environmental
• Mechanical • Health/ Medical
• Chemical • Home and Office
• Optical radiation • Automotive
• Ionizing radiation • Anything you can imagine
• Acoustic
Goal of the sensor node
To collect the data at regular intervals, then transform the data into an
electrical signal and finally send the signal to the sink or the base node.
Wireless sensor network
Applications in details (Environment monitoring)
• 150 sensing nodes deployed throughout the island relay data
temperature, pressure, and humidity to a central device.
• Data was made available on the Internet through a satellite link.
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Applications in details (Zebranet: a WSN to study the behavior of zebras)
• Special GPS-equipped collars were attached to zebras
• Data exchanged with peer-to-peer info swaps
• Coming across a few zebras gives access to the data
Wireless sensor network
Applications in details (Medical applications)
• Vital sign monitoring
• Accident recognition
• Monitoring the elderly
• Intel deployed a 130-node network to monitor the activity of residents
in an elder care facility.
• Patient data is acquired with wearable sensing nodes (the “watch”)
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Wireless sensor network
Applications in details (Forest fire detection)
• A network of Sensor Nodes can be installed in a forest to detect when a
fire has started.
• The nodes can be equipped with sensors to measure temperature, humidity
and gases which are produced by fire in the trees or vegetation.
• If the node detects fire, it sends an alarm message(along with its location) to
the base station
(Air pollution monitoring)
• Traditional air quality monitoring methods, such as building air
quality monitoring stations, are typically expensive.
• The solution to these is air quality monitoring system based on the
technology of wireless sensor networks (WSNs).
• Wireless sensor networks have been deployed in several cities to
monitor the concentration of dangerous gases for citizens.
Wireless sensor network
Applications in details (Eruption)
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Deployment Challenges
• What kind of sensor modality should be used? – PIR, acoustic, magnetic, seismic…
• What is the range of the sensor?
• How reliable is the sensor?
• What is the resolution of the sensor?
• How much power does the sensor use?
• What is the cost of the sensor?
Design Challenges
• Heterogeneity
The devices deployed may be of various types and need to collaborate with each other.
• Distributed Processing
The algorithms need to be centralized as the processing is carried out on different nodes.
• Low Bandwidth Communication
The data should be transferred efficiently between sensors.
• Large Scale Coordination
The sensors need to coordinate with each other to produce required results.
• Utilization of Sensors
The sensors should be utilized in a ways that produce the maximum performance and use less
energy.
• Real Time Computation
The computation should be done quickly as new data is always being generated.
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Roles of participants in WSN
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Examples of sensor nodes
Smart Dust
Eco Motes EYES Node Scatterweb
BTnode
Wireless sensor network
Data-dissemination Scheme for sensors
Conventional Methods
• Direct communication with the base station
– Sensor nodes communicate with the base station directly.
– Energy consuming.
• Multi-hop Scheme
– Transmit through some other intermediate nodes.
– Energy consuming.
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Clustering Hierarchy
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Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH)
• Designed for sensor networks where an end-user wants to remotely
monitor the environment. Where the data from the individual nodes must
be sent to a central base station, often located far from the sensor
network.
• Desirable properties for protocols on these networks:
– Use 100’s – 1000’s of nodes
– Maximize system lifetime
– Maximize network coverage
– Use uniform, battery operated nodes
• The use of distributed cluster formation and local processing to reduce
global communication along with randomized rotation of the cluster-
heads allows LEACH to achieve the desired properties while being
energy-efficient.
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Media Access Control (MAC) Scheme
Two categories of MAC schemes for wireless networks
• Contention-based schemes
– Designed for minimum delay and maximum throughput.
– Require transceivers to monitor the channel at all times.
• Reservation-based or schedule-based schemes
– Detect the neighboring radios before allocating collision-free
channel to a link.
– TDMA —a natural choice for sensor networks.
Sensor-MAC (SMAC)
o Nodes periodically sleep.
o A node sleeps during transmission period of other nodes.
o Not suitable for time-critical applications.
Wireless sensor network
Architecture for a WSN
Special addressing requirement
• Local unique addresses
• Data-centric
• Example: each node has an unique number.
Attribute-based naming architecture
• Data is named by one or more attributes.
• Example: each node is distinguished by an attribute – gps sensors are
practical for this.
Address-free architecture (AFA)
Advantage
Randomly select probabilistically unique identifier for each transaction.
Spatial locality.
Temporal locality.
Drawback
Not applicable when static addressing of nodes is needed.
Identifier conflict.
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Operating system for Sensors (TinyOS)
• What is tinyos
– Open-source operating system
– Wireless embedded sensor networks
– Component-based architecture
• Developed at UCB in collaboration with intel research
• Current stable version is 1.1.15
• Tinyos 2.0 (T2) released on 6/11
• Main ideas –
– Low complexity
– Conserve power – sleep as frequently as possible
• Written in nesc – next generation C compiler
Wireless sensor network
Advantages
• It avoids a lot of wiring .
• Effective in harsh or hostile environments.
• Enable long-distance data collection and transmission.
• Can accommodate new devices at any time .
• It can be accessed through a centralized monitor.
Disadvantages
• It avoids a lot of wiring .
• Lower speed compared to wired network.
• Less secure and vulnerable to malicious security attacks, hence it is the hackers’ best choice network
if the security precautions are not taken timely.
• More complex to configure than wired network.
• Still Costly at large.
• It does not reduce costs for installation.
• Battery recharging or replacement issues if deployed in underwater environment.
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The End
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