Wireless Communication

Protocols in IoT
Module-3
Physical Layer and Transceiver Design
Considerations in WSNs
 Dynamic Modulation Scaling
Changing Network Conditions
• Optimal settings depend on: Target BER, Range of communication, Packet size, etc.
• These factors can change over time, making the previous “optimum” invalid.
• In addition, other constraints like low delay or high throughput may require higher modulation schemes.
Need for Adaptation: To maintain efficiency under varying conditions, the modulation scheme must adapt dynamically.
Such an approach is called Dynamic Modulation Scaling.
Key Parameters in DMS: Symbol rate (B) – fixed number of symbols transmitted per second. Modulation level (m) –
number of bits represented by each symbol.
Energy and Delay Relationship
• Higher modulation levels → higher data rate, but require more radiated power.
• DMS calculates: Energy required per bit, Delay per bit (inverse of data rate)
Working Principle: DMS automatically adjusts the modulation order (m) in m-ary QAM depending on factors like delay,
data rate, and energy needs.
• With modulation scaling, a packet is equipped with a delay constraint, from which directly a minimal required data rate
can be derived.
• Since the symbol rate is kept fixed, the approach is to choose the smallest m that satisfies the required data rate and
which thus minimizes the required energy per bit.
 Low duty cycle protocols and wakeup concepts
➢ Low duty cycle protocols try to avoid spending time in the idle state
and to reduce the communication activities of a sensor node to a
minimum.
➢ In an ideal case, the sleep state is left only when a node is about to
transmit or receive packets.
➢ A concept for achieving this is called wakeup radio.
➢ In several protocols, a periodic wakeup scheme is used. Such
schemes exist in different flavors. One is the cycled receiver approach is
illustrated in below Figure
Low duty cycle protocols and wakeup concepts
➢ In this approach, nodes spend most of their time in the sleep mode
and wake up periodically to receive packets from other nodes.
➢ Specifically, a node A listens onto the channel during its listen period
and goes back into sleep mode when no other node takes the
opportunity to direct a packet to A.
➢ A potential transmitter B must acquire knowledge about A’s listen
periods to send its packet at the right time – this task corresponds to a
rendezvous (meeting point).
➢ This rendezvous can be accomplished by letting node A transmit a
short beacon at the beginning of its listen period to indicate its
willingness to receive packets.
➢ Another method is to let node B send frequent request packets until
one of them hits A’s listen period and is really answered by A.
Low duty cycle protocols and wakeup concepts
➢ However, in either case, node A only receives packets during its listen
period.
➢ If node A itself wants to transmit packets, it must acquire the target’s
listen period.
➢ A whole cycle consisting of sleep period and listen period is also called a
wakeup period.
➢ The ratio of the listen period length to the wakeup period length is also
called the node’s duty cycle.
➢ By choosing a small duty cycle, the transceiver is in sleep mode most of
the time, avoiding idle listening and conserving energy.
➢ By choosing a small duty cycle, the traffic directed from neighboring
nodes to a given node concentrates on a small time window (the listen
period) and in heavy load situations significant competition can occur.
Low duty cycle protocols and wakeup concepts
➢ Choosing a long sleep period induces significant per-hop latency. In
the multihop case, the per-hop latencies add up and create significant
end-to-end latencies.
➢ Sleep phases should not be too short lest the start-up costs
outweigh the benefits.
➢ In other protocols like S-MAC, there is also a periodic wakeup but
nodes can both transmit and receive during their wakeup phases.
➢ When nodes have their wakeup phases at the same time, there is no
necessity for a node wanting to transmit a packet to be awake outside
these phases to rendezvous its receiver.
MAC protocols for wireless sensor networks
❑Balance of requirements:
• Energy efficiency is the primary requirement in WSNs, unlike traditional
networks.
• Classical MAC protocols (e.g., ALOHA, CSMA) lack energy-saving
mechanisms, WSN MAC protocols must be designed to reduce energy
wastage (Collisions, overhearing, etc).
• Fairness, throughput, and delay are less important in WSNs.
• Nodes collaborate, not compete for bandwidth.
• Delay may be traded off to save energy.
• Scalability and robustness are also crucial due to:
• Node mobility or failures
• Temporary power-down for energy harvesting
• Addition or loss of nodes
• WSNs often involve dense networks with many nodes within range.
Energy Problems on the MAC Layer – Key Points
• Transceiver States & Energy Use
• States: Transmit, Receive, Idle, Sleep
• Transmit & Receive → High energy cost
• Idle → Moderate cost (sometimes close to Receive)
• Sleep → Very low energy but node is inactive (“deaf”)
 Main Causes Energy Problems & Design Goals
• Collisions
• Cause wasted energy in transmit and receive.
• Lead to retransmissions.
• Avoid through TDMA, collision avoidance (CSMA), or low network load.
• Overhearing
• Neighboring nodes waste energy receiving packets not meant for them.
• Avoiding overhearing saves energy, but may be useful for network monitoring or traffic
estimation.
• Protocol Overhead
• Extra energy used for control frames (RTS/CTS, headers, trailers, requests).
• Should be minimized.
• Idle Listening
• Nodes consume energy waiting for packets when the channel is idle.
• Can be reduced by turning off transceivers or using TDMA (nodes active only in assigned
slots).
MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols often use extra control packets to
manage communication between nodes and avoid collisions.
These control packets include:
RTS (Request to Send):
Sent by a node before transmitting data to check if the channel is free.
CTS (Clear to Send):
Sent by the receiver to confirm that it’s ready to receive the data.
Headers:
Small pieces of information added at the start of a data packet — they
describe who the sender and receiver are, packet type, and sequence
information.
Trailers:
Added at the end of the packet — often contain error-checking information
(like CRC).
Sparse Topology and Energy Management (STEM) Protocol
• Topic: Energy-efficient communication in Wireless Sensor Networks
• Goal is to Reduce idle listening in sensor networks
• Not a full MAC protocol — acts as an energy-saving
mechanism
• Designed for event-driven networks
• Example: Sensors monitoring elephant movement
• Most of the time: No activity → nodes stay idle
• When event occurs → nodes wake up and communicate
• Operating States
➢1. Monitor State
➢ Nodes mostly idle and do nothing.
➢2. Transfer State
➢ Nodes exhibit significant sensing and communication
• STEM- try
• Eliminate idle listening in the monitor state
• Fast transition into the transfer state, if required.
• Different MAC protocols can be used during the transfer state.
• Network Topology
• “Sparse topology” → network structure changes dynamically
• Nodes switch between sleep and active modes
• Key requirement: Maintain network connectivity even when some nodes sleep
• STEM Architecture
• Each node uses two transceivers and two channels:
• Wakeup Channel
• Data Channel
• Data Channel:
• Stays in sleep mode except during data transfer
• MAC protocol runs only during transfer
• Wakeup Channel Operation
• Time divided into fixed-length wakeup periods (T)
STEM duty cycle for a single node
• Each period has:
• Listen Period (T>>TRx) → node listens for wakeup signal
• Sleep Period → receiver turned off to save energy
• If a node enters the listen period, it simply switches on its receiver for the wakeup channel and waits for
incoming signals. If nothing is received during time TRx, the node returns into sleep mode. Otherwise
the transmitter and receiver start a packet transfer on the data channel.
• Two Variants for the transmitter to acquire receiver’s attention
• STEM-B (Beacon-based)
• STEM-T (Tone-based)

• STEM-B (Beacon-based)
• Transmitter sends beacons on wakeup channel (no carrier sensing)
• Each beacon carries MAC addresses of sender and receiver
• Receiver detects its address → sends ACK
• Both switch to data channel for data transfer (e.g., RTS/CTS)
• Other nodes ignore and return to sleep
• Beacons sent for at least one full wakeup period (T)

• STEM-T (Tone-based)
• Transmitter sends a busy tone (instead of a beacon)
• Tone has no address information STEM duty cycle for a single node
• All nearby nodes detect energy and turn on their data channel
• Non-participating nodes go back to sleep once transfer starts
• Simpler and more energy-efficient
• Needs accurate frequency synchronization
• Additional Notes
• Collisions may occur in STEM-B if multiple transmitters send beacons simultaneously
• If only energy is detected → behaves like STEM-T
• If no ACK → transmitter keeps sending beacons for ≈ T
• In STEM: Listening nodes remain silent
• Opposite of Mediation Device Protocol / Piconet → where waking nodes send query beacons

Performance comparison
Feature STEM-B STEM-T
Signaling Beacons with address info Simple busy tone
ACK Required Yes No
Complexity Higher Lower
Energy Efficiency Moderate Higher
Latency (no collision) Lower (≈ half of STEM-T) Higher
Synchronization Not critical Frequency sync required
Summary
• STEM helps sensor networks save energy by keeping nodes asleep
most of the time and only waking them up when there’s something
important to communicate.
It’s ideal for event-driven environments, where long periods of
inactivity are followed by short bursts of data transfer.
Wakeup Radio Concepts
• Ideal situation- the receiving state, transmitting state, and in the sleep
state at all other times. Idle state should be avoided.
• Achieves goal by a simple, “powerless” receiver that can trigger a
main receiver if necessary.
• MAC protocol assumes several parallel data channels, separated
either in frequency (FDMA) or codes (CDMA).
• A node wishing to transmit a data packet randomly picks one of the
channels and performs a carrier sensing operation.
• If the channel is busy, the node makes another random channel
choice and repeats the carrier-sensing operation.
• After a certain number of unsuccessful trials, the node backs off for a
random time and starts again.
Contd..
• If the channel is idle, the node sends a wakeup signal to the intended
receiver, indicating both the receiver identification and the channel to use.
• The receiver wakes up its data transceiver, tunes to the indicated channel,
and the data packet transmission can proceed.
• Afterward, the receiver can switch its data transceiver back into sleep
mode.
• This wakeup radio concept has the significant advantage that only the low-
power wakeup transceiver has to be switched on all the time while the
much more energy consuming data transceiver is nonsleeping if and only if
the node is involved in data transmissions.
• The Wakeup concept scheme adapts to traffic load—its MAC layer
becomes more active as traffic increases—unlike periodic wakeup
schemes, which operate on a fixed schedule..
 FDMA (Frequency Division Multiple Access)
• Channel access method used in communication
systems to let multiple users share the same
bandwidth without interfering with each other.

•The total available frequency band is divided

into smaller frequency channels.
•Each user is assigned a unique frequency for
communication.
•All users transmit simultaneously, but on
different frequencies
CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access)
• Wireless communication method that allows multiple users
to share the same frequency band at the same time —
without interfering with each other.
•Each user is assigned a unique code (called a
spreading code)
•All users transmit simultaneously over the same
frequency.
•The receiver uses the user’s unique code to separate
and decode their signal from the combined transmission
•Imagine many people talking in a room — each speaks a
different language.
You can understand your friend only because you know their
language (code), even though others are talking too.
Drawbacks
• No real hardware yet for such an ultralow power wakeup transceiver.
• Range of the wakeup radio and the data radio should be the same.
• If the range of the wakeup radio is smaller than the range of the data radio,
possibly not all neighbor nodes can be woken up.
• significantly larger---local addressing schemes, which do not use globally
unique addresses but only locally unique addresses, such that no node has
two or more one-hop neighbors with the same address (A node’s MAC
address should be unique within its two-hop neighborhood).
• Depends on the wakeup channel’s ability to send information like
node addresses and channel IDs. However, this may be difficult due to
hardware limits and the need to handle collisions or errors. If the
channel can’t do this, the transmitter ends up waking all nearby
nodes, causing unnecessary overhearing.
The Mediation Device Protocol
• Compatible with the peer-to-peer communication mode of the IEEE
802.15.4.
• Allows each node in a WSN to go into sleep mode periodically and to wake
up only for short times to receive packets from neighbour nodes.
• There is no global time reference, each node has its own sleeping schedule,
and does not take care of its neighbours sleep schedules. Upon each periodic
wakeup, a node transmits a short query beacon, indicating its node address
and its willingness to accept packets from other nodes.
• The node stays awake for some short time following the query beacon, to
open up a window for incoming packets. If no packet is received during this
window, the node goes back into sleep mode.
• When a node wants to transmit a packet to a neighbour, it has to synchronize
with it. One option would be to have the sender actively waiting for query
beacon, but this wastes considerable energy for synchronization purposes
only.
• The dynamic synchronization approach achieves this synchronization without
requiring the transmitter to be awake permanently to detect the
destinations query beacon. To achieve this, a mediation device (MD) is used.
• The mediation device is not energy constrained and can be active all
the time; this scenario is shown below. Because of its full duty cycle,
the mediation device can receive the query beacons from all nodes in
its vicinity and learn their wakeup periods.
• Suppose that node A wants to transmit a packet to node B. Node A
announces this to the mediation device by sending periodically Request To
Send (RTS) packets, which the MD captures.
• Node A sends its RTS packets instead of its query beacons and thus they
have the same period. Again, there is a short answer window after the RTS
packets, where A listens for answers. After the MD has received A’s RTS
packet, it waits for B’s next query beacon.
• The MD answers this with a query response packet, indicating A’s address
and a timing offset, which lets B know when to send the answering Clear To
Send (CTS) to A such that the CTS packet hits the short answer window
after A’s next RTS packet.
• Therefore, B has learned A’s period. After A has received the CTS packet, it
can send its data packet and wait for B’s immediate acknowledgment.
• After the transaction has finished, A restores its periodic wakeup cycle and
starts to emit query beacons again. Node B also restores its own periodic
cycle and thus decouples from A’s period.
Advantages
• It does not require any time synchronization between the nodes, only
the mediation device has to learn the periods of the nodes.
• The protocol is asymmetric in the sense that most of the energy
burden is shifted to the mediation device, which so far is assumed to
be power unconstrained. The other nodes can be in the sleep state
most of the time and have to spend energy only for the periodic
beacons. Even when a transmitter wants to synchronize with the
receiver, it does not have to wait actively for the query beacon, but
can go back to sleep and wait for the mediation device to do the
synchronization work. This way very low duty cycles can be
supported.
Disadvantages
• The nodes transmit their query beacons without checking for ongoing
transmissions and, thus, the beacons of different nodes may collide
repeatedly when nodes have the same period and their wakeup periods
overlap. If the wakeup periods are properly randomized and the node
density is sufficiently low, this collision probability can be low too.
However, in case of higher node densities or unwanted synchronization
between the nodes, the number of collisions can be significant. A possible
solution to this is the following: When the MD registers collisions, it might
start to emit a dedicated reschedule control frame. All colliding nodes can
hear this frame as long as the MD repeats it often enough. Reception of
this frame causes each node to randomly pick a new period from a certain
interval [a, b] indicated in the reschedule frame. If the MD continues to
perceive collisions, it can enlarge the interval accordingly.
• The mediation device is energy unconstrained.
• Need sufficient mediation devices to cover all nodes.
S-MAC
Major Sources of Energy Wastage
S-MAC
Periodic Listen and Sleep
Schedule Maintenance
Schedule Maintenance
Maintaining Synchronization
SYNC or Data Sending
Data Sending
Overhearing Avoidence
Message Passing
Taxonomy of Multiple Access Protocols
Random Access Protocols
Pure ALOHA
Slotted ALOHA
CSMA
CSMA/CA
Interframe Space(IFS)
Contention Window
Acknowledgement
CSMA Flow
diagram
Leach Protocol
• Introduction:
• WSN is a network that consists of large number of low power sensor
nodes.
• Leach is a Low energy adaptive clustering hierarchy protocol.
• The main goal of cluster based sensor networks is to decrease system
delay and reduce energy consumption.
• This is also a protocol that is cluster based for micro sensor networks
that achieves energy efficiency, scalable routing and fair media
access.
• The protocol is organized in rounds and each round is subdivided into
a setup phase and a steady-state phase.
• The setup phase starts with the self-election of nodes to cluster
heads.
• In the following advertisement phase, the cluster heads inform their
neighborhood with an advertisement packet.
• The cluster heads contend for the medium using a CSMA protocol
with no further provision against the hidden-terminal problem.
• The non-cluster head nodes pick the advertisement packet with the
strongest received signal strength.
• In the following cluster-setup phase, the members inform their
clusterhead (“join”), again using a CSMA protocol.
• After the cluster setup-phase, the cluster head knows the number of
members and their identifiers.
Organization of LEACH Protocols
• Leach protocol is a Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) based
Multiple Access Control (MAC) protocol.
• The Purpose of this protocol is to elongate the lifespan of wireless
networks by lowering the energy.
• Leach protocol functions in rounds and each round contains two
phases; first is cluster setup stage and second is steady state storage
with the aim to reduce trivial(small) energy costs.
• Also, here in each round some fixed number of cluster heads are
elected and do not then stand a chance to become a cluster head
next time in one cycle.
• This is needed to balance energy consumption.
• These kinds of protocols are invented to minimize the energy
consumption by aggregating data and to reduce the transmission to
the base station.
• A node can become a cluster head only if it has an energy value
greater than a threshold value that is set earlier.
Advantages
• Firstly, cluster heads combine the whole data which leads to the
reduction of traffic in the entire network.
• Secondly, there is a considerable saving in the energy consumption as
the routing is single hop from nodes to cluster heads.
• Thirdly, this protocol improves and increases the lifespan of the
network.
• Fourthly, to create a cluster the location information of node is not
necessary.
• And lastly, leach is self organized and completely distributed as is
does not need any control information from the base station.
Disadvantages
• Firstly, it does not give a clue about exact number of cluster heads in
the network.
• Secondly, an important disadvantage is that if the cluster head due to
some reason dies, then the cluster will be of no use because the data
that was collected by the cluster head will never reach the base
station.
• Lastly, since the clusters are distributed randomly, this sometimes
results into an increase in energy consumption and can affect the
entire network’s performance.