Wireless sensor networks

INTRODUCTION

 Smart environments represent the next evolutionary

development step in building, utilities, industrial,
home, shipboard, and transportation systems
automation.
 Smart environment relies first on sensory data from
the real world.
 Sensory data comes from multiple sensors of
different modalities in distributed locations.
 The information needed by smart environments is
provided by Distributed Wireless Sensor Networks.
 WSN

 A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of

spatially distributed sensors to cooperatively monitor
physical or environmental conditions, such as
temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or
pollutants.

 The development was motivated by military

applications such as battlefield surveillance.
Wireless Sensor Network Architecture
 WSN node components
 Low-power controller.
 Process all relevant data
Sensors P
 Memory. O
 Store programs. W
Memory Controller
E
 Communication device. R
 To exchange data b/w Comm. device

nodes.
 Sensors.
 Scalar sensors: temperature, light, etc.

 Cameras, microphones.

 Power.
 FEATURES

 Limited power they can harvest or store

 Ability to withstand harsh environmental conditions
 Ability to cope with node failures
 Mobility of nodes
 Dynamic network topology
 Communication failures
 Heterogeneity of nodes
 Large scale of deployment
 NETWORK TOPOLOGY

 Mesh topology
 Star topology

 Ring topology
 Bus topology

 Fully connected topology

Commercially available wireless sensor
systems
 Crossbow Berkeley Motes
 Microstrain’s X-Link
Measurement System
 STANDARDS
 ZigBee
 Embedded sensing, medical data collection, consumer
devices like television remote controls, and home
automation.
 Wireless HART
 Industrial applications like Process Monitoring and
Control.
 6LoWPAN
 IETF standards track specification for the IP-to-MAC-
Layer mapping for IPv6.
 ISA100
 Makes use of 6lowpan and provides additional
agreements for industrial control applications
 HARDWARE

 Sensors
 External Data Acquisition
 Energy and Power
 Connectors
 Antennas
 SENSORS

 A sensor is a device that measures a physical quantity

and converts it into a signal which can be read by an
observer or by an instrument.
 Sensors are used in everyday objects such as touch-
sensitive elevator buttons and lamps which dim or
brighten by touching the base.
 Sensors that measure very small changes must have
very high sensitivities.
 Types of sensors

 Light Sensors
 Temperature Sensors
 Humidity Sensors
 Pressure Sensors
 Gas Sensors
 Passive Infrared (PIR) Sensors
 External Data Acquisition

 In some cases it is not feasible or not optimal to

interface the sensors or sensor equipment directly to
the MCU on a WSN node.
 In such cases external data acquisition hardware is
necessary to (i) condition and/or (ii) convert the
signals.
 Analog to Digital Conversion.
 Energy and Power

 There is a focus on increasing the lifetimes of sensor

nodes through power generation, power conservation,
and power management.
 Software power management techniques can greatly
decrease the power consumed by RF sensor nodes.
 TDMA is especially useful for power conservation.
 The required transmission power increases as the
square of the distance between source and destination
 Connectors

 Weatherproof Plstic
Connectors:- IP68
Outdoor WSN deployments IP69K
require special
water/weatherproof
enclosures and connectors.

Metal shielded
IP67/IP68
IP69K
 Antennas

 The antenna element is one of the key components.

 It is the interface between the RF channel and the
system's hardware.
 Successful transmission and reception of data
between the sensor nodes requires high-efficiency
antennas because of low transmitted power and the
limitations imposed on the antenna size.
 Antennas for sensor systems can be directional or
omnidirectional depending on the system application.
 Contd.

 Directional antennas help in reducing the effects of

interference as well as in extending the
communication range of the system, but provide
limited coverage because of their directional
characteristics.
 Omnidirectional antennas enable covering all the
spots equally, but they have shorter range and could
pick up undesired signals.
 SOFTWARE

 Operating systems
 Middleware
 Programming languages
 Algorithms
 Operating systems

 Operating systems for wireless sensor network nodes

are typically less complex.
 Operating systems such as eCos or uC/OS are used for
sensor networks.
 TinyOS based on an event-driven programming model
instead of multithreading is the first operating system
specifically designed for wireless sensor networks.
 Both the TinyOS system and programs written for
TinyOS are written in a special programming language
called nesC which is an extension to the C
programming language
 Contd..
 Operating systems that allow programming in C are:-
 Contiki (event-driven operating system )

 MANTIS (based on multithreading )

 BTnut (based on cooperative multi-threading and

plain C code)

 SOS (event-driven operating system )

 Nano-RK (based on multithreading )

 Middleware
 Computer software that connects software
components or applications.
 Software consists of a set of services that allows
multiple processes running on one or more machines
to interact.
 It is similar to the middle layer of a three-tier single
system architecture.
 Middleware sits "in the middle" between application
software that may be working on different operating
systems.
 Programming languages
 c@t (Computation at a point in space (@) Time)
 DCL (Distributed Compositional Language)
 galsC
 LabVIEW
 nesC
 Protothreads
 SNACK
 SNAPpy (Python)
 SQTL
 Java Sun SPOT
 uSWN
 Algorithms

Distributed algorithm
Two algorithms:
(i) Load Balancing Protocol for Sensing (LBP)
(ii) Deterministic Energy Efficient Protocol for
Sensing (DEEPS)
Load Balancing Protocol for Sensing
(LBP)
 The main idea of LBP is that the maximum number
of sensors are kept alive as long as possible by means
of load balancing.
 Each sensor node can be in three states:

- Active: the sensor is active and monitors the targets

- Idle: idle and sleep modes, the sensor stops wasting
any energy
- Alert: the sensor monitors targets but will change its
state to either active or idle state soon
 Contd.
 For a certain period, all nodes are altered using wake-
up calls, and each sensor has to decide whether to
change their state to either active or idle. This process
is called global reshuffle.
 During global reshuffle, each sensor sends two
broadcasts: the first broadcast includes its cover
targets and energy level and the second broadcast
informs whether it will be active or idle.
 If an active sensor nearly exhausts its energy, then it
broadcasts about that to its neighbors. A minimal
subset of neighbors in idle state will change their
states into active and effectively replace the
exhausted sensor.
Deterministic Energy Efficient Protocol
for Sensing (DEEPS)
 The main intuition behind DEEPS is that they try to
minimize the energy consumption rate for low energy
targets while allowing higher energy consumption for
sensors with higher total supply.
 They define each target as either “sink” or “hill”.
 For the correctness of monitoring protocol, at least
one sensor is placed in-charge of each target.
Contd.
 Contd.

 Selection of the sensor which should be in-charge is

determined by using the following two rules :
 (i) if the target t is a sink, among the sensors covering
t, sensor s with the richest batteries is placed in-
charge of t.
 (ii) If target t is a hill, then the sensor s covering t
whose poorest target is the richest over all sensors
covering t, is placed incharge of t. If there are several
such sensors, then the richest among them is placed
in-charge of t.
 SIMULATORS
 TOSSIM (a part of TinyOS )
 COOJA (which is a part of Contiki)
 ns-2 (Traditional network simulators )
 J-Sim (A platform independent component based
simulator )
 Atarraya (focused on the evaluation of topology
control protocols )
 OMNeT++ (component-based, modular and open-
architecture discrete event network simulator)
 DATA VISUALIZATION
 The data gathered from wireless sensor networks is
usually saved in the form of numerical data in a central
base station.
 The environmental data, such as temperature, rainfall,
and sunlight, around the plants are sent by the wireless
sensor networks to a base station which is able to
access the Internet.
 Database management technology, geographic
information system and Web development technology
are used to visualize the data gathered by the wireless
sensor networks.
 The Web development technology -- dynamic Web
programming -- is also adopted in this system to make
the data available via the Internet.
 Design Challenges

 Typically, severely energy constrained.

 Limited energy sources (e.g., batteries).

 Trade-off between performance and lifetime.

 Self-organizing and self-healing.

 Remote deployments.

 Scalable.
 Arbitrarily large number of nodes.
 Design Challenges (Cont’d)
 Heterogeneity.
 Devices with varied capabilities.

 Different sensor modalities.

 Hierarchical deployments.

 Adaptability.
 Adjust to operating conditions and changes in

application requirements.
 Security and privacy.
 Potentially sensitive information.

 Hostile environments.
 APPLICATIONS

 Area monitoring
(a)
In event-driven
applications, one
or several sensors
detect an event
and report it to a
monitoring station.
(b) In demand-driven
applications,
sensors remain
silent until they
receive a request
from the monitoring
station.
 Glacier monitoring

Custom sensor probes are

placed in, on and under
glaciers and data collected
from them by a base station
on the surface.
Measurements include
temperature, pressure,
stress, weather and
subglacial movement. The
information gathered is
important in understanding
the dynamics of glaciers as
well as global warming.
 Environmental
monitoring

 50 node seismic
monitoring set up
 Terrestrial monitoring:
based on observing the
biological and
chemical cycles of
nature.
 Aquatic monitoring:
Monitoring of streams
and river
 Volcano monitoring
 Wireless sensor networks
for monitoring eruptions of
active and hazardous
volcanoes.
 This technology will permit
sensor arrays with greater
spatial resolution and larger
apertures than existing
wired monitoring stations.
 Landslide Detection
The geophysical sensors
selected for the in-
situmeasurements are pore
pressure transducers, soil
moisturesensors, geophones,
stain gauges and tiltmeters,
based on their relevance in
finding the causative
geological factors for
inducing landslides under
heavy rainfall conditions.
 Many other applications

 Automotive
 Health care
 Defense related
 Agriculture
 The integration of WSNs in mobile phones.
 Industrial monitoring
 Conclusion

 Extremely beneficial in disaster response scenarios.

 Requires efficiency and accuracy improvement.
 A step up in saving lives, creating valuable medical
research data, and allocation of medical resources.
 REFERENCES

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
 http://www.snm.ethz.ch/Projects/Sensors
 http://fiji.eecs.harvard.edu/Volcano
 http://www.cse.usf.edu/~labrador/Atarraya/
 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=962897
THANKS